The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Naturalist in La Plata
Title: The Naturalist in La Plata
Author: W. H. Hudson
Release date: February 1, 2005 [eBook #7446]
Most recently updated: April 12, 2014
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Eric Eldred
Pampas grass: Indians
on the look-out for strayed horses
THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA
BY
W. H. HUDSON, C.M.Z.S.
JOINT AUTHOR OF
"ARGENTINE ORNITHOLOGY"
WHITE-BANDED
MOCKING-BIRD
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
J. SMIT
THIRD
EDITION.
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND
COMPANY
1895
PREFACE.
THE plan I have
followed in this work has been to sift and arrange the facts I
have gathered concerning the habits of the animals best known to
me, preserving those only, which, in my judgment, appeared worth
recording. In some instances a variety of subjects have linked
themselves together in my mind, and have been grouped under one
heading; consequently the scope of the book is not indicated by
the list of contents: this want is, however, made good by an
index at the end.
It is seldom an easy
matter to give a suitable name to a book of this description. I
am conscious that the one I have made choice of displays a lack
of originality; also, that this kind of title has been used
hitherto for works constructed more or less on the plan of the
famous Naturalist on the Amazons. After I have made this
apology the reader, on his part, will readily admit that, in
treating of the Natural History of a district so well known, and
often described as the southern portion of La Plata, which has a
temperate climate, and where nature is neither exuberant nor
grand, a personal narrative would have seemed
superfluous.
The greater portion
of the matter contained in
VI
Preface.
this volume has
already seen the light in the form of papers contributed to the
Field, with other journals that treat of Natural History;
and to the monthly magazines :--Longmans', The Nineteenth
Century, The Gentleman's Magazine, and others : I am indebted
to the Editors and Proprietors of these periodicals for kindly
allowing me to make use of this material.
Of all animals,
birds have perhaps afforded me most pleasure; but most of the
fresh knowledge I have collected in this department is contained
in a larger work (Argentine Ornithology), of which Dr. P.
L. Sclater is part author. As I have not gone over any of the
subjects dealt with in that work, bird-life has not received more
than a fair share of attention in the present volume.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. THE DESERT
PAMPAS ....... 1
CHAPTER II. CUB PUMA,
OR LION OF AMERICA 31
CHAPTER III. WAVE OF
LIFE ........ 59
CHAPTER IV. SOME
CURIOUS ANIMAL WEAPONS ..... 69
CHAPTER V. FEAR IN
BIRDS ........ 83
CHAPTER VI. PARENTAL
AND EARLY INSTINCTS ..... 101
CHAPTER VII. THE
MEPHITIC SKUNK . 116
CHAPTER VIII. MIMICRY
AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS . 124
CHAPTER IX.
DRAGON-FLY STORMS ....... 130
viii
Contents.
CHAPTER X.
MOSQUITOES AND PARASITE PROBLEMS .... 135
CHAPTER XI. HUMBLE-BEES
AND OTHER MATTERS . . . .154
CHAPTER XII. A NOBLE
WASP . ,. . . . . . . . 162
CHAPTER XIII.
NATURE'S NIGHT-LIGHTS ....... 168
CHAPTER XIV. FACTS AND
THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIDERS . 178
CHAPTER XV. THE
DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT . . . 200
CHAPTER XVI.
HUMMING-BIRDS . . . . . . , . . 205
CHAPTER XVII. THE
CRESTED SCREAMER . . . . . . . . 221
CHAPTER XVIII. THE
WOODHEWER FAMILY 235
CHAPTER XIX. MUSIC AND
DANCING IN NATURE ..... 261
CHAPTER XX.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE VIZCACHA ...... 289
CHAPTER XXI. THE
DYING HUANACO ....... 314
PAGE
CHAPTER XXII. THE
STRANGE INSTINCTS OF CATTLE ... 329
CHAPTER XXIII.
HORSE AND MAN ........ 348
CHAPTER XXIV. SEEN
AND LOST ..,,. 363
APPENDIX ......
384
INDEX ........-
391
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Pampas Grass : Indians
on the look-out for strayed
Horses .......
Frontispiece
Coypú
.......... 12
Puma killed by Cow
....... 39
Puma attacking
Jaguar ..... To face 48
Armadillo killing
Snake ....... 72
Wrestler Frog . . .
. . . . . .77
Ceratrophrys ornata
........ 80
Didelphys azaree
and young . . . . . . 102
Pampa Sheep
......... 109
Skunk and Dog . . .
. . . . .123
Storm, of
Dragon-flies ..... To face, 132
Ixodes; before and
after a blood diet . . . .142
Fire-wood gatherer
and Bird-fly .. . . . .147
A Bee's Kevengo . .
. . . . . .165
Mygale fusca,
threatening ....... 191
Loddigesia
Mirabilis . . . . . . . .215
Crested Screamer .
. . . . . . . 224
Some Woodhewers'
beaks . . . . . . .239
Dance of Ypecaha
Rails ....... 267
Wing-display of
Jacanas ....... 268
Dance of
Spur-winged Lapwings ..... 270
White-banded
Mocking-bird ...... 277
Vizcachas .........
290
The Dying Huanaco
...... To face 318
Gaucho . . . . . .
, , . . 350
A lost Humming-bird
....... 367
Small Spine-tail
and Nest ,...,. 371
THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA,
CHAPTER I.
THE DESERT
PAMPAS.
DURING recent years
we have heard much about the great and rapid changes now going on
in the plants and animals of all the temperate regions of the
globe colonized by Europeans. These changes, if taken merely as
evidence of material progress, must be a matter of rejoicing to
those who are satisfied, and more than satisfied, with our system
of civilization, or method of outwitting Nature by the removal of
all checks on the undue increase of our own species. To one who
finds a charm in things as they exist in the unconquered
provinces of Nature's dominions, and who, not being over-anxious
to reach the end of his journey, is content to perform it on
horseback, or in a waggon drawn by bullocks, it is permissible to
lament the altered aspect of the earth's surface, together with
the disappearance of numberless noble and beautiful forms, both
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. For he cannot find it in
his heart to love the forms by which they are replaced; these are
cultivated and domesticated, and have only become useful to man
at the cost of
B
2 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
that grace and
spirit which freedom and wildness give. In numbers they are
many--twenty-five millions of sheep in this district, fifty
millions in that, a hundred millions in a third--but how few are
the species in place of those destroyed? and when the owner of
many sheep and much wheat desires variety--for he possesses this
instinctive desire, albeit in conflict with and overborne by the
perverted instinct of destruction--what is there left to him,
beyond his very own, except the weeds that spring up in his
fields under all skies, ringing him round with old-world
monotonous forms, as tenacious of their undesired union with him
as the rats and cockroaches that inhabit his house?
We hear most
frequently of North America, New Zealand, and Australia in this
connection; but nowhere on the globe has civilization "written
strange defeatures" more markedly than on that great area of
level country called by English writers the pampas, but by
the Spanish more appropriately La Pampa--from the Quichua
word signifying open space or country--since it forms in most
part one continuous plain, extending on its eastern border from
the river Parana, in latitude 32 degrees, to the Patagonian
formation on the river Colorado, and comprising about two hundred
thousand square miles of humid, grassy country.
This district has
been colonized by Europeans since the middle of the sixteenth
century; but down to within a very few years ago immigration was
on too limited a scale to make any very great change; and,
speaking only of the pampean country, the conquered territory was
a long, thinly-
3 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
settled strip,
purely pastoral, and the Indians, with their primitive mode of
warfare, were able to keep back the invaders from the greater
portion of their ancestral hunting-grounds. Not twenty years ago
a ride of two hundred miles, starting from the capital city,
Buenos Ayres, was enough to place one well beyond the furthest
south-western frontier outpost. In 1879 the Argentine Government
determined to rid the country of the aborigines, or, at all
events, to break their hostile and predatory spirit once for all;
with the result that the entire area of the grassy pampas, with a
great portion of the sterile pampas and Patagonia, has been made
available to the emigrant. There is no longer anything to deter
the starvelings of the Old World from possessing themselves of
this new land of promise, flowing, like Australia, with milk and
tallow, if not with honey; any emasculated migrant from a Genoese
or Neapolitan slum is now competent to "fight the wilderness" out
there, with his eight-shilling fowling-piece and the implements
of his trade. The barbarians no longer exist to frighten his soul
with dreadful war cries; they have moved away to another more
remote and shadowy region, called in their own language
Alhuemapu, and not known to geographers. For the results
so long and ardently wished for have swiftly followed on General
Roca's military expedition; and the changes witnessed during the
last decade on the pampas exceed in magnitude those which had
been previously effected by three centuries of
occupation.
In view of this
wave of change now rapidly sweeping away the old order, with
whatever beauty
4 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
and grace it
possessed, it might not seem inopportune at the present moment to
give a rapid sketch, from the field naturalist's point of view,
of the great plain, as it existed before the agencies introduced
by European colonists had done their work, and as it still exists
in its remoter parts.
The humid, grassy,
pampean country extends, roughly speaking, half-way from the
Atlantic Ocean and the Plata and Paraná rivers to the
Andes, and passes gradually into the "Monte Formation," or
sterile pampa--a sandy, more or less barren district,
producing a dry, harsh, ligneous vegetation, principally thorny
bushes and low trees, of which the chañar (Gurliaca
decorticans) is the most common; hence the name of
"Chañar-steppe" used by some writers: and this formation
extends southwards down into Patagonia. Scientists have not yet
been able to explain why the pampas, with a humid climate, and a
soil exceedingly rich, have produced nothing but grass, while the
dry, sterile territories on their north, west, and south borders
have an arborescent vegetation. Darwin's conjecture that the
extreme violence of the pampero, or south-west wind,
prevented trees from growing, is now proved to have been
ill-founded since the introduction of the Eucalyptus globulus;
for this noble tree attains to an extraordinary height on the
pampas, and exhibits there a luxuriance of foliage never seen in
Australia.
To this level
area--my "parish of Selborne," or, at all events, a goodly
portion of it--with the sea on one hand, and on the other the
practically infinite expanse of grassy desert--another sea,
not
The Desert
Pampas. 5
"in vast
fluctuations fixed," but in comparative calm--I should like to
conduct the reader in imagination: a country all the easier to be
imagined on account of the absence of mountains, woods, lakes,
and rivers. There is, indeed, little to be imagined--not even a
sense of vastness; and Darwin, touching on this point, in the
Journal of a Naturalist, aptly says:--"At sea, a person's
eye being six feet above the surface of the water, his horizon is
two miles and four-fifths distant. In like manner, the more level
the plain, the more nearly does the horizon approach within these
narrow limits; and this, in my opinion, entirely destroys the
grandeur which one would have imagined that a vast plain would
have possessed."
I remember my first
experience of a hill, after having been always shut within "these
narrow limits." It was one of the range of sierras near Cape
Corrientes, and not above eight hundred feet high; yet, when I
had gained the summit, I was amazed at the vastness of the earth,
as it appeared to me from that modest elevation. Persons born and
bred on the pampas, when they first visit a mountainous district,
frequently experience a sensation as of "a ball in the throat"
which seems to prevent free respiration.
In most places the
rich, dry soil is occupied by a coarse grass, three or four feet
high, growing in large tussocks, and all the year round of a deep
green; a few slender herbs and trefoils, with long, twining
stems, maintain a frail existence among the tussocks; but the
strong grass crowds out most plants, and scarcely a flower
relieves its
6 A Naturalist in La
Plata.
uniform everlasting
verdure. There are patches, sometimes large areas, where it does
not grow, and these are carpeted by small creeping herbs of a
livelier green, and are gay in spring with flowers, chiefly of
the composite and papilionaceous kinds; and verbenas, scarlet,
purple, rose, and white. On moist or marshy grounds there are
also several lilies, yellow, white, and red, two or three flags,
and various other small flowers; but altogether the flora of the
pampas is the poorest in species of any fertile district on the
globe. On moist clayey ground flourishes the stately pampa grass,
Gynerium argenteum, the spears of which often attain a height of
eight or nine feet. I have ridden through many leagues of this
grass with the feathery spikes high as my head, and often higher.
It would be impossible for me to give anything like an adequate
idea of the exquisite loveliness, at certain times and seasons,
of this queen of grasses, the chief glory of the solitary pampa.
Everyone is familiar with it in cultivation; but the garden-plant
has a sadly decaying, draggled look at all times, and to my mind,
is often positively ugly with its dense withering mass of coarse
leaves, drooping on the ground, and bundle of spikes, always of
the same dead white or dirty cream-colour. Now colour--the
various ethereal tints that give a blush to its cloud-like
purity--is one of the chief beauties of this grass on its native
soil; and travellers who have galloped across the pampas at a
season of the year when the spikes are dead, and white as paper
or parchment, have certainly missed its greatest charm. The plant
is social, and in some places where
The Desert
Pampas, 7
scarcely any other
kind exists it covers large areas with a sea of fleecy-white
plumes; in late summer, and in autumn, the tints are seen,
varying from the most delicate rose, tender and illusive as the
blush on the white under-plumage of some gulls, to purple and
violaceous. At no time does it look so perfect as in the evening,
before and after sunset, when the softened light imparts a
mistiness to the crowding plumes, and the traveller cannot help
fancying that the tints, which then seem richest, are caught from
the level rays of the sun, or reflected from the coloured vapours
of the afterglow.
The last occasion on
which I saw the pampa grass in its full beauty was at the close
of a bright day in March, ending in one of those perfect sunsets
seen only in the wilderness, where no lines of house or hedge mar
the enchanting disorder of nature, and the earth and sky tints
are in harmony. I had been travelling all day with one companion,
and for two hours we had ridden through the matchless grass,
which spread away for miles on every side, the myriads of white
spears, touched with varied colour, blending in the distance and
appearing almost like the surface of a cloud. Hearing a swishing
sound behind us, we turned sharply round, and saw, not forty
yards away in our rear, a party of five mounted Indians, coming
swiftly towards us: but at the very moment we saw them their
animals came to a dead halt, and at the same instant the five
riders leaped up, and stood erect on their horses' backs.
Satisfied that they had no intention of attacking us, and were
only looking out for strayed horses, we continued watching them
for
8
The Naturalist in La
Plata.
some time, as they
stood gazing away over the plain in different directions,
motionless and silent, like bronze men on strange horse-shaped
pedestals of dark stone; so dark in their copper skins and long
black hair, against the far-off ethereal sky, flushed with amber
light; and at their feet, and all around, the cloud of white and
faintly-blushing plumes. That farewell scene was printed very
vividly on my memory, but cannot be shown to another, nor could
it be even if a Ruskin's pen or a Turner's pencil were mine; for
the flight of the sea-mew is not more impossible to us than the
power to picture forth the image of Nature in our souls, when she
reveals herself in one of those "special moments" which have
"special grace" in situations where her wild beauty has never
been spoiled by man.
At other hours and
seasons the general aspect of the plain is monotonous, and in
spite of the unobstructed view, and the unfailing verdure and
sunshine, somewhat melancholy, although never sombre: and
doubtless the depressed and melancholy feeling the pampa inspires
in those who are unfamiliar with it is due in a great measure to
the paucity of life, and to the profound silence. The wind, as
may well be imagined on that extensive level area, is seldom at
rest; there, as in the forest, it is a "bard of many breathings,"
and the strings it breathes upon give out an endless variety of
sorrowful sounds, from the sharp fitful sibilations of the dry
wiry grasses on the barren places, to the long mysterious moans
that swell and die in the tall polished rushes of the marsh. It
is also curious to note that with a few exceptions the resident
birds
The Desert
Pampas, 9
are comparatively
very silent, even those belonging to groups which elsewhere are
highly loquacious. The reason of this is not far to seek. In
woods and thickets, where birds abound most, they are continually
losing sight of each other, and are only prevented from
scattering by calling often; while the muffling effect on sound
of the close foliage, to' which may be added a spirit of
emulation where many voices are heard, incites most species,
especially those that are social, to exert their voices to the
utmost pitch in singing, calling, and screaming. On the open
pampas, birds, which are not compelled to live concealed on the
surface, can see each other at long distances, and perpetual
calling is not needful: moreover, in that still atmosphere sound
travels far. As a rule their voices are strangely subdued;
nature's silence has infected them, and they have become silent
by habit. This is not the case with aquatic species, which are
nearly all migrants from noisier regions, and mass themselves in
lagoons and marshes, where they are all loquacious together. It
is also noteworthy that the subdued bird-voices, some of which
are exceedingly sweet and expressive, and the notes of many of
the insects and batrachians have a great resemblance, and seem to
be in accord with the aeolian tones of the wind in reeds and
grasses: a stranger to the pampas, even a naturalist accustomed
to a different fauna, will often find it hard to distinguish
between bird, frog, and insect voices.
The mammalia is poor
in species, and with the single exception of the well-known
vizcacha (Lagostomus trichodactylus), there is not one
of
10
The Naturalist in La
Plata,
which it can truly
be said that it is in any special way the product of the pampas,
or, in other words, that its instincts are better suited to the
conditions of the pampas than to those of other districts. As a
fact, this large rodent inhabits a vast extent of country, north,
west, and south of the true pampas, but nowhere is he so
thoroughly on his native heath as on the great grassy plain.
There, to some extent, he even makes his own conditions, like the
beaver. He lives in a small community of twenty or thirty
members, in a village of deep-chambered burrows, all with their
pit-like entrances closely grouped together; and as the village
endures for ever, or for an indefinite time, the earth constantly
being brought up forms a mound thirty or forty feet in diameter;
and this protects the habitation from floods on low or level
ground. Again, he is not swift of foot, and all rapacious beasts
are his enemies; he also loves to feed on tender succulent herbs
and grasses, to seek for which he would have to go far afield
among the giant grass, where his watchful foes are lying in wait
to seize him; he saves himself from this danger by making a
clearing all round his abode, on which a smooth turf is formed;
and here the animals feed and have their evening pastimes in
comparative security: for when an enemy approaches, he is easily
seen; the note of alarm is sounded, and the whole company
scuttles away to their refuge. In districts having a different
soil and vegetation, as in Patagonia, the vizcachas' curious,
unique instincts are of no special advantage, which makes it seem
probable that they have been formed on the pampas.
The Desert Pampas.
11
How marvellous a
thing it seems that the two species of mammalians--the beaver and
the vizcacha--that most nearly simulate men's intelligent actions
in their social organizing instincts, and their habitations,
which are made to endure, should belong to an order so low down
as the Rodents! And in the case of the latter species, it adds to
the marvel when we find that the vizcacha, according to
Water-house, is the lowest of the order in its marsupial
affinities.
The vizcacha is the
most common rodent on the pampas, and the Rodent order is
represented by the largest number of species. The finest is the
so-called Patagonian hare--Dolichotis patagonica--a beautiful
animal twice as large as a hare, with ears shorter and more
rounded, and legs relatively much longer. The fur is grey and
chestnut brown. It is diurnal in its habits, lives in kennels,
and is usually met with in pairs, or small flocks. It is better
suited to a sterile country like Patagonia than to the grassy
humid plain; nevertheless it was found throughout the whole of
the pampas; but in a country where the wisdom of a Sir William
Harcourt was never needed to slip the leash, this king of the
Rodentia is now nearly extinct.
A common rodent is
the coypú--Myiopotamus coypú--yellowish in colour
with bright red incisors; a rat in shape, and as large as an
otter. It is aquatic, lives in holes in the banks, and where
there are no banks it makes a platform nest among the rushes. Of
an evening they are all out swimming and playing in the water,
conversing together in their strange tones, which sound like the
moans and
12
The Naturalist in La
Plata.
cries of wounded
and suffering men; and among them the mother-coypú is seen
with her progeny, numbering eight or nine, with as many on her
back as she can accommodate, while the others swim after her,
crying for a ride.
With reference to
this animal, which, as we have seen, is prolific, a strange thing
once happened in Buenos Ayres. The coypú was much more
abundant fifty years ago than now, and its skin, which
Coypú.
has a fine fur
under the long coarse hair, was largely exported to Europe. About
that time the Dictator Rosas issued a decree prohibiting the
hunting of the coypú. The result was that the animals
increased and multiplied exceedingly, and, abandoning their
aquatic habits, they became terrestrial and migratory, and
swarmed everywhere in search of food. Suddenly a mysterious
malady fell on them, from which they quickly perished, and became
almost extinct.
The Desert
Pampas. 13
What a blessed
thing it would be for poor rabbit-worried Australia if a similar
plague should visit that country, and fall on the right animal!
On the other hand, what a calamity if the infection, wide-spread,
incurable, and swift as the wind in its course, should attack the
too-numerous sheep! And who knows what mysterious, unheard-of
retributions that revengeful deity Nature may not be meditating
in her secret heart for the loss of her wild four-footed children
slain by settlers, and the spoiling of her ancient beautiful
order!
A small pampa
rodent worthy of notice is the Cavia australis, called
cuí in the vernacular from its voice: a timid,
social, mouse-coloured little creature, with a low gurgling
language, like running babbling waters; in habits resembling its
domestic pied relation the guinea pig. It loves to run on clean
ground, and on the pampas makes little rat-roads all about its
hiding-place, which little roads tell a story to the fox, and
such like; therefore the little cavy's habits, and the habits of
all cavíes, I fancy, are not so well suited to the humid
grassy region as to other districts, with sterile ground to run
and play upon, and thickets in which to hide.
A more interesting
animal is the Ctenomys magellanica, a little less than the rat in
size, with a shorter tail, pale grey fur, and red incisors. It is
called tuco-tuco from its voice, and oculto from
its habits; for it is a dweller underground, and requires a
loose, sandy soil in which, like the mole, it may swim
beneath the surface. Consequently the pampa, with its heavy,
moist mould, is not the tuco's proper place; nevertheless,
wherever there
14 The
Naturalist in La Plata.
is a stretch of
sandy soil, or a range of dunes, there it is found living; not
seen, but heard; for all day long and all night sounds its voice,
resonant and loud, like a succession of blows from a hammer; as
if a company of gnomes were toiling far down underfoot, beating
on their anvils, first with strong measured strokes, then with
lighter and faster, and with a swing and rhythm as if the little
men were beating in time to some rude chant unheard above the
surface. How came these isolated colonies of a species so
subterranean in habits, and requiring a sandy soil to move in, so
far from their proper district--that sterile country from which
they are separated by wide, unsuitable areas? They cannot perform
long overland journeys like the rat. Perhaps the dunes have
travelled, carrying their little cattle with them.
Greatest among the
carnivores are the two cat-monarchs of South America, the jaguar
and puma. Whatever may be their relative positions elsewhere, on
the pampas the puma is mightiest, being much more abundant and
better able to thrive than its spotted rival. Versatile in its
preying habits, its presence on the pampa is not surprising; but
probably only an extreme abundance of large mammalian prey, which
has not existed in recent times, could have, tempted an animal of
the river and forest-loving habits of the jaguar to colonize this
cold, treeless, and comparatively waterless desert. There are two
other important cats. The grass-cat, not unlike Felis catus in
its robust form and dark colour, but a larger, more powerful
animal, inexpressibly savage in disposition. The second, Felis
geoffroyi,
The Desert
Pampas. 15
is a larger and
more beautiful animal, coloured like a leopard; it is called
wood-cat, and, as the name would seem to indicate, is an intruder
from wooded districts north of the pampas.
There are two
canines: one is Azara's beautiful grey fox-like dog, purely a fox
in habits, and common everywhere. The other is far more
interesting and extremely rare; it is called
aguará, its nearest ally being the
aguará-guazú, the Canis jubatus or maned
wolf of naturalists, found north of the pampean district. The
aguará is smaller and has no mane; it is like the dingo in
size, but slimmer and with a sharper nose, and lias a much
brighter red colour. At night when camping out I have heard its
dismal screams, but the screamer was sought in vain; while from
the gauchos of the frontier I could only learn that it is a
harmless, shy, solitary animal, that ever flies to remoter wilds
from its destroyer, man. They offered me a skin--what more could
I want? Simple souls! it was no more to me than the skin of a
dead dog, with long, bright red hair. Those who love dead animals
may have them in any number by digging with a. spade in that vast
sepulchre of the pampas, where perished the hosts of antiquity. I
love the living that are above the earth; and how small a remnant
they are in South America we know, and now yearly becoming more
precious as it dwindles away.
The pestiferous
skunk is universal; and there are two quaint-looking weasels,
intensely black in colour, and grey on the back and flat crown.
One, the Galictis barbara, is a large bold animal that
16
The Naturalist in La
Plata.
hunts in companies;
and when these long-bodied creatures sit up erect, glaring with
beady eyes, grinning and chattering at the passer-by, they look
like little friars in black robes and grey cowls; but the
expression on their round faces is malignant and bloodthirsty
beyond anything in nature, and it would perhaps be more decent to
liken them to devils rather than to humans.
On the pampas there
is, strictly speaking, only one ruminant, the Cervus campestris,
which is common. The most curious thing about this animal is that
the male emits a rank, musky odour, so powerful that when the
wind blows from it the effluvium comes in nauseating gusts to the
nostrils from a distance exceeding two miles. It is really
astonishing that only one small ruminant should be found on this
immense grassy area, so admirably suited to herbivorous
quadrupeds, a portion of which at the present moment affords
sufficient pasture to eighty millions of sheep, cattle, and
horses. In La Plata the author of The Mammoth and the
Flood will find few to quarrel with his doctrine.
Of Edentates there
are four. The giant armadillo does not range so far, and the
delicate little pink fairy armadillo, the truncated
Chlamydophorus, is a dweller in the sand-dunes of Mendoza, and
has never colonized the grassy pampas. The Tatusia hybrida,
called "little mule" from the length of its ears, and the Dasypus
tricinctus, which, when disturbed, rolls itself into a ball, the
wedge-shaped head and wedge-shaped tail admirably fitting into
the deep-cut shell side by side; and the quirquincho
(Dasypus minutus), all inhabit the pampa, are
The Desert
Pampas. 7
diurnal, and feed
exclusively on insects, chiefly ants. Wherever the country
becomes settled, these three disappear, owing to the dulness of
their senses, especially that of sight, and to the diurnal habit,
which was an advantage to them, and enabled them to survive when
rapacious animals, which are mostly nocturnal, were their only
enemies. The fourth, and most important, is the hairy armadillo,
with habits which are in strange contrast to those of its
perishing congeners, and which seem to mock many hard-and-fast
rules concerning animal life. It is omnivorous, and will thrive
on anything from grass to flesh, found dead and in all stages of
decay, or captured by means of its own strategy. Furthermore, its
habits change to suit its conditions: thus, where nocturnal
carnivores are its enemies, it is diurnal; but where man appears
as a chief persecutor, it becomes nocturnal. It is much hunted
for its flesh, dogs being trained for the purpose; yet
it
actually becomes
more abundant as population increases in any district; and, if
versatility in habits or adaptiveness can be taken as a measure
of intelligence, this poor armadillo, a survival of the past, so
old on the earth as to have existed contemporaneously with the
giant glyptodon, is the superior of the large-brained cats and
canines.
To finish with the
mammalia, there are two interesting opossums, both of the genus
Didelphys, but in habits as wide apart as cat from otter. One of
these marsupials appears so much at home on the plains that I
almost regret having said that the vizcacha alone gives us the
idea of being in its habits the product of the pampas.
This animal--
18
The Naturalist in La
Plata,
Didelphys
crassicaudata--has a long slender, wedge-, shaped head and body,
admirably adapted for pushing through the thick grass and rushes;
for it is both terrestrial and aquatic, therefore well suited to
inhabit low, level plains liable to be flooded. On dry land its
habits are similar to those of a weasel; in lagoons, where it
dives and swims with great ease, it constructs a globular nest
suspended from the rushes. The fur is soft, of a rich yellow,
reddish above, and on the sides and under surfaces varying in
some parts to orange, in others exhibiting beautiful copper and
terra-cotta tints. These lovely tints and the metallic lustre
soon fade from the fur, otherwise this animal would be much
sought after in the interests of those who love to decorate
themselves with the spoils of beautiful dead animals--beast and
bird. The other opossum is the black and white Didelphys azarae;
and it is indeed strange to find this animal on the pampas,
although its presence there is not so mysterious as that of the
tuco-tuco. It shuffles along slowly and awkwardly on the ground,
but is a great traveller nevertheless. Tschudi met it
mountaineering on the Andes at an enormous altitude, and, true to
its lawless nature, it confronted me in Patagonia, where the
books say no marsupial dwells. In every way it is adapted to an
arboreal life, yet it is everywhere found on the level country,
far removed from the conditions which one would imagine to be
necessary to its existence. For how many thousands of years has
this marsupial been a dweller on the plain, all its best
faculties unexercised, its beautiful grasping hands pressed to
the ground, and its prehensile tail
The Desert Pampas.
19
dragged like an
idle rope behind it! Yet, if one is brought to a tree, it will
take to it as readily as a duck to water, or an armadillo to
earth, climbing up the trunk and about the branches with a
monkey-like agility. How reluctant Nature seems in some cases to
undo her own work! How long she will allow a specialized organ,
with the correlated instinct, to rest without use, yet ready to
flash forth on the instant, bright and keen-edged, as in the
ancient days of strife, ages past, before peace came to dwell on
earth!
The avi-fauna is
relatively much richer than the mammalia, owing to the large
number of aquatic species, most of which are migratory with their
"breeding" or "subsistence-areas" on the pampas. In more senses
than one they constitute a "floating population," and their
habits have in no way been modified by the conditions of the
country. The order, including storks, ibises, herons, spoonbills,
and flamingoes, counts about eighteen species; and the most
noteworthy birds in it are two great ibises nearly as large as
turkeys, with mighty resonant voices. The duck order is very
rich, numbering at least twenty species, including two beautiful
upland geese, winter visitors from Magellanic lands, and two
swans, the lovely black-necked, and the pure white with rosy
bill. Of rails, or ralline birds, there are ten or twelve,
ranging from a small spotted creature no bigger than a thrush to
some large majestic birds. One is the courlan, called "crazy
widow" from its mourning plumage and long melancholy screams,
which on still evenings may be heard a league away. Another is
the
20 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
graceful variegated
ypicaha, fond of social gatherings, where the birds
perform a dance and make the desolate marshes resound with their
insane humanlike voices. A smaller kind, Porphyriops melanops,
has a night-cry like a burst of shrill hysterical laughter, which
has won for it the name of "witch;" while another, Rallus
rythyrhynchus, is called "little donkey" from its braying cries.
Strange eerie voices have all these birds. Of the remaining
aquatic species, the most important is the spur-winged crested
screamer; a noble bird as large as a swan, yet its favourite
pastime is to soar upwards until it loses itself to sight in the
blue ether, whenca it pours forth its resounding choral notes,
which reach the distant earth clarified, and with a rhythmic
swell and fall as of chiming bells. It also sings by night,
"counting the hours," the gauchos say, and where they have
congregated together in tens of thousands the mighty roar of
their combined voices produces an astonishingly grand
effect.
The largest aquatic
order is that of the Limicolse--snipes, plover, and their
allies--which has about twenty-five species. The vociferous
spur-winged lapwing; the beautiful black and white stilt; a true
snipe, and a painted snipe, are, strictly speaking, the only
residents; and it is astonishing to find, that, of the
five-and-twenty species, at least thirteen are visitors from
North America, several of them having their breeding-places quite
away in the Arctic regions. This is one of those facts concerning
the annual migration of birds which almost stagger belief; for
among them are species with widely different habits, upland,
marsh and sea-shore
The Desert
Pampas. 21
birds, and in their
great biannual journey they pass through a variety of climates,
visiting many countries where the conditions seem suited to their
requirements. Nevertheless, in September, and even as early as
August, they begin to arrive on the pampas, the golden plover
often still wearing his black nuptial dress; singly and in pairs,
in small flocks, and in clouds they come--curlew, godwit, plover,
tatler, tringa--piping the wild notes to which the Greenlander
listened in June, now to the gaucho herdsman on the green plains
of La Plata, then to the wild Indian in his remote village; and
soon, further south, to the houseless huanaco-hunter in the grey
wilderness of Patagonia.
Here is a puzzle for
ornithologists. In summer on the pampas we have a godwit--Limosa
hudsonica; in March it goes north to breed; later in the season
flocks of the same species arrive from the south to winter on the
pampas. And besides this godwit, there are several other North
American species, which have colonies in the southern hemi-spere,
with a reversed migration and breeding season. Why do these
southern birds winter so far south? Do they really breed in
Patagonia? If so, their migration is an extremely limited one
compared with that of the northern birds--seven or eight hundred
miles, on the outside, in one case, against almost as many
thousands of miles in the other. Considering that some species
which migrate as far south as Patagonia breed in the Arctic
regions as far north as latitude 82 degrees, and probably higher
still, it would be strange indeed if none of the birds which
winter in Patagonia and on the
22 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
pampas were summer
visitors to that great austral continent, which has an estimated
area twice as large as that of Europe, and a climate milder than
the arctic one. The migrants would have about six hundred miles
of sea to cross from Tierra del Fuego; but we know that the
golden plover and other species, which sometimes touch at the
Bermudas when travelling, fly much further than that without
resting. The fact that a common Argentine titlark, a non-migrant
and a weak flyer, has been met with at the South Shetland
Islands, close to the antarctic continent, shows that the journey
may be easily accomplished by birds with strong flight; and that
even the winter climate of that unknown land is not too severe to
allow an accidental colonist, like this small delicate bird, to
survive. The godwit, already mentioned, has been observed in
flocks at the Falkland Islands in May, that is, three months
after the same species had taken its autumal departure from the
neighbouring mainland. Can it be believed that these late
visitors to the Falklands were breeders in Patagonia, and had
migrated east to winter in so bleak a region? It is far more
probable that they came from the south. Officers of sailing ships
beating round Cape Horn might be able to settle this question
definitely by looking out, and listening at night, for flights of
birds, travelling north from about the first week in January to
the end of February; and in September and October travelling
south. Probably not fewer than a dozen species of the plover
order are breeders on the great austral continent; also other
aquatic birds--ducks and
The Desert
Pampas. 23
geese; and many
Passerine birds, chiefly of the Tyrant family.
Should the long
projected Australasian expedition to the South Polar regions ever
be carried to a successful issue, there will probably be
important results for ornithology, in spite of the astounding
theory which has found a recent advocate in Canon Tristram, that
all life originated at the North Pole, whence it spread over the
globe, but never succeeded in crossing the deep sea surrounding
the antarctic continent, which has consequently remained till now
desolate, "a giant ash (and ice) of death." Nor is it unlikely
that animals of a higher class than birds exist there; and the
discovery of new mammalians, differing in type from those we
know, would certainly be glad tidings to most students of
nature.
Land birds on the
pampas are few in species and in numbers. This may be accounted
for by the absence of trees and other elevations on which birds
prefer to roost and nest; and by the scarcity of food. Insects
are few in dry situations; and the large perennial grasses, which
occupy most of the ground, yield a miserable yearly harvest of a
few minute seeds; so that this district is a poor one both for
soft and hard billed birds. Hawks of several genera, in moderate
numbers, are there, but generally keep to the marshes. Eagles and
vultures are somewhat unworthily represented by carrion-hawks
(Polyborinae); the lordly carancho, almost eagle-like in size,
black and crested, with a very large, pale blue, hooked beak--his
battle axe: and his humble follower and jackal, the brown
and
24 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
harrier-like
chimango. These nest on the ground, are versatile in their
habits, carrion-eaters, also killers on their own account, and,
like wild dogs, sometimes hunt in bands, which gives them an
advantage. They are the unfailing attendants of all
flesh-hunters, human or feline; and also furiously pursue and
persecute all eagles and true vultures that venture on that great
sea of grass, to wander thereafter, for ever lost and harried,
"the Hagars and Ishmaels of their kind."
The owls are few and
all of wide-ranging species. The most common is the
burrowing-owl, found in both Americas. Not a retiring owl this,
but all day long, in cold and in heat, it stands exposed at the
mouth of its kennel, or on the vizcacha's mound, staring at the
passer-by with an expression of grave surprise and reprehension
in its round yellow eyes; male and female invariably together,
standing stiff and erect, almost touching--of all birds that pair
for life the most Darby and Joan like.
Of the remaining
land birds, numbering about forty species, a few that are most
attractive on account of their beauty, engaging habits, or large
size, may be mentioned here. On the southern portion of the
pampas the military starling (Sturnella) is found, and looks like
the European starling, with the added beauty of a scarlet breast:
among resident pampas birds the only one with a touch of
brilliant colouring. It has a pleasing, careless song, uttered on
the wing, and in winter congregates in great flocks, to travel
slowly northwards over the plains. When thus travelling the birds
observe a kind of order, and the flock feeding along
the
The Desert
Pampas. 25
ground shows a very
extended front--a representation in bird-life of the "thin red
line"--and advances by the hindmost birds constantly flying over
the others and alighting in the front ranks.
Among the
tyrant-birds are several species of the beautiful wing-banded
genus, snow-white in colour, with black on the wings and tail:
these are extremely graceful birds, and strong flyers, and in
desert places, where man seldom intrudes, they gather to follow
the traveller, calling to each other with low whistling notes,
and in the distance look like white flowers as they perch on the
topmost stems of the tall bending grasses.
The most
characteristic pampean birds are the tinamous--called partridges
in the vernacular--large as a fowl, and the spotted tinamou,
which is about the size of the English partridge. Their habits
are identical: both lay eggs of a beautiful wine-purple colour,
and in both species the young acquire the adult plumage and power
of flight when very small, and fly better than the adults. They
have small heads, slender curved beaks, unfeathered legs and
feet, and are tailless; the plumage is deep yellowish, marked
with black and brown above. They live concealed, skulking like
rails through the tall grass, fly reluctantly, and when driven
up, their flight is exceedingly noisy and violent, the bird soon
exhausting itself. They are solitary, but many live in proximity,
frequently calling to each other with soft plaintive voices. The
evening call-notes of the larger bird are flute-like in
character, and singularly sweet and expressive.
26 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
The last figure to
be introduced into this sketch--which is not a catalogue--is that
of the Rhea. Glyptodon, Toxodon, Mylodon, Megatherium, have
passed away, leaving no descendants, and only pigmy
representatives if any; but among the feathered inhabitants of
the pampa the grand archaic ostrich of America survives from a
time when there were also giants among the avians. Vain as such
efforts usually are, one cannot help trying to imagine something
of the past history of this majestic bird, before man came to
lead the long chase now about to end so mournfully. Its
fleetness, great staying powers, and beautiful strategy when
hunted, make it seem probable that it was not without pursuers,
other than the felines, among its ancient enemies, long-winded
and tenacious of their quarry; and these were perhaps of a type
still represented by the wolf or hound-like aguará and
aguara-guazú. It might be supposed that when almost all
the larger forms, both mammal and bird, were overtaken by
destruction, and when the existing rhea was on the verge of
extinction, these long-legged swift canines changed their habits
and lost their bold spirit, degenerating at last into hunters of
small birds and mammals, on which they are said to
live.
The rhea possesses
a unique habit, which is a puzzle to us, although it probably
once had some significance--namely, that of running, when hunted,
with one wing raised vertically, like a great sail--a veritable
"ship of the wilderness." In every way it is adapted to the
conditions of the pampas in a far greater degree than other
pampean birds, only excepting the rufous and spotted tinamous.
Its
The Desert
Pampas. 27
commanding stature
gives it a wide horizon; and its dim, pale, bluish-grey colour
assimilates to that of the haze, and renders it invisible at even
a moderate distance. Its large form fades out of sight
mysteriously, and the hunter strains his eyes in vain to
distinguish it on the blue expanse. Its figure and carriage have
a quaint majestic grace, somewhat unavian in character, and
peculiar to itself. There are few more strangely fascinating
sights in nature than that of the old black-necked cock bird,
standing with raised agitated wings among the tall plumed
grasses, and calling together his scattered hens with hollow
boomings and long mysterious suspira-tions, as if a wind blowing
high up in the void sky had found a voice. Rhea-hunting with the
bolas, on a horse possessing both speed and endurance, and
trained to follow the bird in all his quick doublings, is
unquestionably one of the most fascinating forms of sport ever
invented, by man. The quarry has even more than that fair chance
of escape, without which all sport degenerates into mere
butchery, unworthy of rational beings; moreover, in this unique
method of hunting the ostrich the capture depends on a
preparedness for all the shifts and sudden changes of course
practised by the bird when closely followed, which is like
instinct or intuition; and, finally, in a dexterity in casting
the bolas at the right moment, with a certain aim, which no
amount of practice can give to those who are not to the manner
born.
This 'wild mirth of
the desert,' which the gaucho has known for the last three
centuries, is now passing away, for the rhea's fleetness can no
longer
28 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
avail him. He may
scorn the horse and his rider, what time he lifts himself up, but
the cowardly murderous methods of science, and a systematic war
of extermination, have left him no chance. And with the rhea go
the flamingo, antique and splendid; and the swans in their bridal
plumage; and the rufous tinamou--sweet and mournful melodist of
the eventide; and the noble crested screamer, that clarion-voiced
watch-bird of the night in the wilderness. Those, and the other
large avians, together with the finest of the mammalians, will
shortly be lost to the pampas utterly as the great bustard is to
England, and as the wild turkey and bison and many other species
will shortly be lost to North America. What a wail there would be
in the world if a sudden destruction were to fall on the
accumulated art-treasures of the National Gallery, and the
marbles in the British Museum, and the contents of the King's
Library--the old prints and' mediaeval illuminations! And these
are only the work of human hands and brains--impressions of
individual genius on perishable material, immortal only in the
sense that the silken cocoon of the dead moth is so, because they
continue to exist and shine when the artist's hands and brain are
dust:--and man has the long day of life before him in which to do
again things like these, and better than these, if there is any
truth in evolution. But the forms of life in the two higher
vertebrate classes are Nature's most perfect work; and the life
of even a single species is of incalculably greater value to
mankind, for what it teaches and would continue to teach, than
all the chiselled marbles and painted canvases
The Desert
Pampas. 29
the world contains;
though doubtless there are many persons who are devoted to art,
but blind to some things greater than art, who will set me down
as a Philistine for saying so. And, above all others, we should
protect and hold sacred those types, Nature's masterpieces, which
are first singled out for destruction on account of their size,
or splendour, or rarity, and that false detestable glory which is
accorded to their most successful slayers. In ancient
times the spirit of life shone brightest in these; and when
others that shared the earth with them were taken by death they
were left, being more worthy of perpetuation. Like immortal
flowers they have drifted down to us on the ocean of time, and
their strangeness and beauty bring to our imaginations a dream
and a picture of that unknown world, immeasurably far removed,
where man was not: and when they perish, something of gladness
goes out from nature, and the sunshine loses something of its
brightness. Nor does their loss affect us and our times only. The
species now being exterminated, not only in South America but
everywhere on the globe, are, so far as we know, untouched by
decadence. They are links in a chain, and branches on the tree of
life, with their roots in a past inconceivably remote; and but
for our action they would continue to flourish, reaching outward
to an equally distant future, blossoming into higher and more
beautiful forms, and gladdening innumerable generations of our
descendants. But we think nothing of all this: we must give full
scope to our passion for taking life, though by so doing we "ruin
the great work of time;" not in the sense in which
30 The Naturalist in
La Plata.
the poet used those
words, but in one truer, and wider, and infinitely sadder. Only
when this sporting rage has spent itself, when there are no
longer any animals of the larger kinds remaining, the loss we are
now inflicting on this our heritage, in which we have a
life-interest only, will be rightly appreciated. It is hardly to
be supposed or hoped that posterity will feel satisfied with our
monographs of extinct species, and the few crumbling bones and
faded feathers, which may possibly survive half a dozen centuries
in some happily-placed museum. On the contrary, such dreary
mementoes will only serve to remind them of their loss; and if
they remember us at all, it will only be to hate our memory, and
our age--this enlightened, scientific, humanitarian age, which
should have for a motto "Let us slay all noble and beautiful
things, for tomorrow we die."
CHAPTER II.
THE PUMA, OB LION OF
AMERICA.
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,
32 Naturalist in La
Plata.
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
The Puma, or Lion of
America. 33
attacks
comparatively large birds, and, after fastidiously picking a meal
from the flesh of the head and neck, abandons the untouched body
to the polybori and other hawks of the more ignoble
sort.
In pastoral
districts the puma is very destructive to the larger domestic
animals, and has an extraordinary fondness for horseflesh. This
was first noticed by Molina, whose Natural History of
Chili was written a century and a half ago. In Patagonia I
heard on all sides that it was extremely difficult to breed
horses, as the colts were mostly killed by the pumas. A native
told me that on one occasion, while driving his horses home
through the thicket, a puma sprang out of the bushes on to a colt
following behind the troop, killing it before his eyes and not
more than six yards from his horse's head. In this instance, my
informant said, the puma alighted directly on the colt's back,
with one fore foot grasping its bosom, while with the other it
seized the head, and, giving it a violent wrench, dislocated the
neck. The colt fell to the earth as if shot, and he affirmed that
it was dead before it touched the ground.
Naturalists have
thought it strange that the horse, once common throughout
America, should have become extinct over a continent apparently
so well suited to it and where it now multiplies so greatly. As a
fact wherever pumas abound the wild horse of the present time,
introduced from Europe, can hardly maintain its existence.
Formerly in many places horses ran wild and multiplied to an
amazing extent, but this happened, I believe, only in districts
where the puma was scarce or had
D
34
The Naturalist in La
Plata.
already been driven
out by man. My own experience is that on the desert pampas wild
horses are exceedingly scarce, and from all accounts it is the
same throughout Patagonia.
Next to horseflesh,
sheep is preferred, and where the puma can come at a flock, he
will not trouble himself to attack horned cattle. In Patagonia
especially I found this to be the case. I resided for some time
at an estancia close to the town of El Carmen, on the Rio Negro,
which during my stay was infested by a very bold and cunning
puma. To protect the sheep from his attacks an enclosure was made
of upright willow-poles fifteen feet long, while the gate, by
which he would have to enter, was close to the house and nearly
six feet high. In spite of the difficulties thus put in the way,
and of the presence of several large dogs, also of the watch we
kept in the hope of shooting him, every cloudy night he came, and
after killing one or more sheep got safely away. One dark night
he killed four sheep; I detected him in the act, and going up to
the gate, was trying to make out his invisible form in the gloom
as he flitted about knocking the sheep over, when suddenly he
leaped clear over my head and made his escape, the bullets I sent
after him in the dark failing to hit him. Yet at this place
twelve or fourteen calves, belonging to the milch cows, were
every night shut into a small brushwood pen, at a distance from
the house where the enemy could easily have destroyed every one
of them. When I expressed surprise at this arrangement, the owner
said that the puma was not fond of calves' flesh, and came only
for the
The Puma, or Lion of
America. 35
sheep. Frequently
after his nocturnal visits we found, by tracing his footprints in
the loose sand, that he had actually used the calves' pen as a
place of concealment while waiting to make his attack on the
sheep.
The puma often kills
full-grown cows and horses, but exhibits a still greater daring
when attacking the jaguar, the largest of American carnivores,
although, compared with its swift, agile enemy, as heavy as a
rhinoceros. Azara states that it is generally believed in La
Plata and Paraguay that the puma attacks and conquers the jaguar;
but he did not credit what he heard, which was not strange, since
he had already set the puma down as a cowardly animal, because it
does not attempt to harm man or child. Nevertheless, it is well
known that where the two species inhabit the same district they
are at enmity, the puma being the persistent persecutor of the
jaguar, following and harassing it as a tyrant-bird harasses an
eagle or hawk, moving about it with such rapidity as to confuse
it, and, when an opportunity occurs, springing upon its back and
inflicting terrible wounds with teeth and claws. Jaguars with
scarred backs are frequently killed, and others, not long escaped
from their tormentors, have been found so greatly lacerated that
they were easily overcome by the hunters.