Almost all the authors who have written the History of the New World, mention this animal, some by the name of tiger or leopard, and others under the names given them at Brasil, Mexico, &c. The first who gave a particular description of him were Piso and Marcgrave, who called him jaguara, instead of janouara, his Brasilian name. They also speak of another animal of the same genus, and perhaps of the same species, under the name of jaguarette; but, like those two authors, we have distinguished them from each other, because there is a probability of their being different species; but whether they are really so, or only varieties of the same species, we cannot determine, having never seen but one of the kinds. Piso and Marcgrave say, that the jaguarette differs from the jaguar, by its hair being shorter, more glossy, and of a different colour, being black, interspersed with spots of a still deeper black. But from the similitude in the form of his body, in his manners, and disposition, he may, nevertheless, be only a variety of the same species, especially as, according to the testimony of Piso, the ground colour of the jaguar, as well as that of the spots, vary in different individuals; he says that some are marked with black, and others with red or yellowish spots; and with regard to the difference of colour, that is, of grey, yellow, or black, the same is to be met with in other species of animals, as there are black wolves, black foxes, black squirrels, &c. If such variations are not so common among wild as tame animals, it is because the former are less liable to those accidents which tend to produce them. Their lives being more uniform, their food less various, and their freedom less restrained, their nature must be more permanent, that is, less subject to accidental alterations and changes in colour. The jaguar is found in Brasil, Paraguay, Tucuman, Guiana, in the country of the Amazons, in Mexico, and in all parts of South America. At Cayenne, however, this animal is more scarce than the cougar, which they denominate red tiger, nor is the jaguar so common now in Brasil, which appears his native country, as it was formerly. A price has been set upon his head, so that many of them have been destroyed, and the others have withdrawn themselves from the coasts to the inland parts of the country. The jaguarette appears to have been always more scarce, or at least to have inhabited those places which were distant from the haunts of men, and the few travellers who mention him appear to have drawn their accounts entirely from Marcgrave and Piso. _Engraved for Barr's Buffon._ [Illustration: FIG. 105. _Jaguar of New Spain_] [Illustration: FIG. 106. _Cougar_] SUPPLEMENT.