The Puma has been singularly unfortunate in its biographers. Formerly it often happened that writers were led away by isolated and highly exaggerated incidents to attribute very shining qualities to their favourite animals; the lion of the Old World thus came to be regarded as brave and I magnanimous above all beasts of the field--the Bayard of the four-footed kind, a reputation which these prosaic and sceptical times have not suffered it to keep. Precisely the contrary has happened with the puma of literature; for, although to those personally acquainted with the habits of this lesser lion of the New World it is known to possess a marvellous courage and daring, it is nevertheless always spoken of in books of natural history as the most pusillanimous of the larger carnivores. It does not attack man, and Azara is perfectly correct when he affirms that it never hurts, or threatens to hurt, man or child, even when it finds them sleeping. This, however, is not a full statement of the facts; the puma will not even defend itself against man. How natural, then, to conclude that it is too timid to attack a human being, or to defend itself, but scarcely philosophical; for even the most cowardly carnivores we know--dogs and hyaenas, for instance--will readily attack a disabled or sleeping man when pressed by hunger; and when driven to desperation no animal is too small or too feeble to make a show of resistance. In such a case "even the armadillo defends itself," as the gaucho proverb says. Besides, the conclusion is in contradiction to many other well-known facts. Putting-aside the puma's passivity in the presence of man, it is a bold hunter that invariably prefers large to small game; in desert places killing peccary, tapir, ostrich, deer, huanaco, &c., all powerful, well-armed, or swift animals. Huanaco skeletons seen in Patagonia almost invariably have the neck dislocated, showing that the puma was the executioner. Those only who have hunted the huanaco on the sterile plains and mountains it inhabits know how wary, keen-scented, and fleet of foot it is. I once spent several weeks with a surveying party in a district where pumas were very abundant, and saw not less than half a dozen deer every day, freshly killed in most cases, and all with dislocated necks. Where prey is scarce and difficult to capture, the puma, after satisfying its hunger, invariably conceals the animal it has killed, covering it over carefully with grass and brushwood; these deer, however, had all been left exposed to the caracaras and foxes after a portion of the breast had been eaten, and in many cases the flesh had not been touched, the captor having satisfied itself with sucking the blood. It struck me very forcibly that the puma of the desert pampas is, among mammals, like the peregrine falcon of the same district among birds; for there this wide-ranging raptor only attacks comparatively large birds, and, after fastidiously picking a meal from the flesh of