70 



animals pass the day in caverns, and rove 

 around the habitations at night. Being well fed, 

 they reach six feet in length. One of them had 

 devoured the preceding year a horse belong- 

 ing to the farm. He dragged his prey on a fine 

 moon-light night, across the savannah, under a 

 ceiba * of an enormous size. The groans of the 

 dying horse awoke the slaves of the farm, who 

 went out armed with lances, and machetes^. 

 The tiger continued on his prey, awaited their 

 approach with tranquillity, and fell only after a 

 long and obstinate resistance. This fact, and a 

 great many others verified on the spot, prove, 

 that the great jaguar % of Terra Firma, like the 

 jaguarete of Paraguay, and the real tiger of 

 Asia, does not flee from man, when it is dared 

 to close fight, and when it is not frightened 

 by the number of assailants. Naturalists at 

 present admit, that BufFon was entirely mis- 



* Bombax ceiba, five-leaved silk-cotton tree. 



+ Great knives, with very long blades, like a couteau de 

 chasse. No one enters the woods in the torrid zone, without 

 being armed with a machete, not only to cut his way 

 through the woods, but as a defence against wild beasts. 



J Felis onca, Lin., which BufFon called pant here oillee, 

 and which he believed came from Africa. The female pan- 

 ther, figured in the Histoire des Quadrupedes of BufFon, T. 

 9, pi. 12, is a real jaguar. (Cuvier, Ossem. fossiles, Tom. 

 iv, Chats, p. 13.) We shall have occasion to examine 

 hereafter a fact so important with respect to zoology, and 

 the geography of animals. 



