The Puma, or Lion of America. 51 
beast in tlie sand, in a direction towards tlie bell 
tent. The impression was deep and plain, of a 
large round foot well furnished with claws. Upon 
acquainting the people in the tent with the circuni” 
stances of our story, we found that they had been 
visited by the same unwelcome guest.” 
Mr. Andrew Murray, in his work on the Geogra- 
phical Distribution of Mammals, gives the Straits 
of Magellan as the extreme southern limit of the 
puma’s range, and in discussing the above passage 
from Byron he writes ; This reference, however, 
gives no support to the notion of the animal alluded 
to having been a puma. . . . The description of the 
footprints clearly shows that the animal could not 
have been a puma. None of the cat tribe leave any 
trace of a claw in their footprints. . . . The dogs, 
on the other hand, leave a very well-defined claw- 
mark. . . . Commodore Byron and his party had 
therefore suffered a false alarm. The creature 
which had disturbed them was, doubtless, one of the 
harmless domestic dogs of the natives.” 
The assurance that the bold hardy adventurer 
and his men suffered a false alarm, and were thrown 
into a great state of excitement at the appearance of 
one of the wretched domestic dogs of the Fuegians, 
with which they were familiar, comes charmingly, 
it must be said, from a closet naturalist, who 
surveys the world of savage beasts from his London 
study. He apparently forgets that Commodore 
Byron lived in a time when the painful accuracy 
and excessive minuteness we are accustomed to was 
not expected from a writer, whenever he happened 
to touch on any matters connected with zoology. 
E 2 
