152 
the puma. 
its throat, and never quitting it till he 
glutted his ravenous thirst for blood. In th® 
southernmost of the United States, the pui^^ 
IS not uncommon ; but there his ferocity aiK^ 
energy are much less formidable than in tb^ 
Pampas of Buenos Ayres, or on the burning 
shores of the Amazons. 
Even there, however, it appears that the 
puma shows an instinctive fear of man. Cap' 
tarn Head, in his “ Journey across the PaU’' 
pas, furnishes the following illustrative an^C' 
dote, on the authority of the individual 
whom the circumstance happened : “ He wa* 
trying to shoot some wild ducks, and, in ord^'^ 
to approach them unperceived, he put the coi- 
ner of his poncho [a kind of blanket worn M 
way of cloak] over his head, and, crawling 
along the ground upon his hands and knees- 
the poncho not only covered his body, bid 
trailed along the ground behind him. As be 
was thus creeping by a large bush of reeds- 
