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. This kind of criticism, which seizes on a slight inaccuracy in one passage, and totally ignores an important statement in another--as, for instance, that of the "great beast" seen in the woods--might be extended to other portions of the book, and Byron's entire narrative made to appear as purely a work of the imagination as Peter Wilkin's adventures in those same antarctic seas. Mr. J. W. Boddam Whetham, in his work _Across Central America_ (1877), gives an anecdote of the puma, which he heard at Sacluk, in Guatemala, and which strangely resembles some of the stories I have heard on the pampas. He writes: "The following event, most extraordinary if true, is said to have occurred in this forest to a mahogany-cutter, who had been out marking trees. As he was returning to his hut, he suddenly felt a soft body pressing against him, and on looking down saw a cougar, which, with tail erect, and purring like a cat, twisted itself in and out of his legs, and glided round him, turning up its fierce eyes as if with laughter. Horror-stricken and with faltering steps he kept on, and the terrible animal still circled about, now rolling over, and now touching him with a paw like a cat playing with a mouse. At last the suspense became too great, and with a loud shout he struck desperately at the creature with his axe. It bounded on one side and crouched snarling and showing its teeth. Just as it was about to spring, the man's companion, who had heard his call, appeared in the distance, and with a growl the beast vanished into the thick bushes." Now, after allowing for exaggeration, if there is no foundation for stories of this character, it is really a very wonderful coincidence that they should be met with in countries so widely separated as Patagonia and Central America. Pumas, doubtless, are scarce in Guatemala; and, as in other places where they have met with nothing but persecution from man, they are shy of him; but had this adventure occurred on the pampas, where they are better known, the person concerned in it would not have said that the puma played with him as a cat with a mouse, but rather as a tame cat plays with a child; nor, probably, would he have been terrified into imagining that the animal, even after its caresses had met with so rough a return, was about to spring on him.