470 
ON AMERICAN ANIMALS 
their native courage to such a degree, that they fly from 
the threatenings of his voice, and dare not assail him. 
They content themselves with preying .on small cattle; 
and will fly before women and children, who make them 
indignantly quit their prey, by striking them with clubs." 
Had BuFFON not been tramelled by a favourite hypo* 
thesis respecting the alleged inferiority of the animal king- 
dom in America, he would have seen that the writers who 
notice the cowardice of the larger beasts of prey of that 
Continent, only speak of them as observed near European 
colonies, where their native ferocity has been compelled to 
acknowledge the superiority of human intellect and arms. 
Recent observations have shewn how ill-founded these spe- 
culations of the French naturalist have been. 
Humboldt mentions many instances of the ferocious 
courage of the Great Jaguar. Among others, an animal 
of this species had seized a horse belonging to a farm in 
the province of Cumana, and dragged it to a considerable 
distance. " The groans of the dying horse,*" says Hum- 
boldt, " awoke the slaves of the farm, who went out armed 
with lances and cutlasses. The animal continued on its 
prey, awaited their approach with firmness, 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 Jaguaret of Para- 
guay, and the real Tiger of Asia, does not flee from man, 
when it is dared to close combat, and when it is not 
alarmed by the great number of its assailants. Naturalists 
are now agreed, that Buffon was entirely mistaken with 
respect to the largest of the feline genus of America. 
What that celebrated writer says of the cowardly tigers of 
the New Continent, relates to the small ocelots ; and we 
shall shortly see, that, on the Orinoko, the real jaguar of 
