e
ground. He was heavier than the very big male horse-killing cougar I
shot in Colorado, whose skull Hart Merriam reported as the biggest he
had ever seen; he was very nearly double the weight of any of the male
African leopards we shot; he was nearly or quite the weight of the
smallest of the adult African lionesses we shot while in Africa. He
had the big bones, the stout frame, and the heavy muscular build of a
small lion; he was not lithe and slender and long like a cougar or
leopard; the tail, as with all jaguars, was short, while the girth of
the body was great; his coat was beautiful, with a satiny gloss, and
the dark-brown spots on the gold of his back, head, and sides were
hardly as conspicuous as the black of the equally well-marked spots
against his white belly.

This was a well-known jaguar. He had occasionally indulged in cattle-
killing; on one occasion during the floods he had taken up his abode
near the ranch-house and had killed a couple of cows and a young
steer. The hunters had followed him, but he had made his escape, and
for the time being had abandoned the neighborhood. In these marshes
each jaguar had a wide irregular range and travelled a good deal,
perhaps only passing a day or two in a given locality, perhaps
spending a week where game was plentiful. Jaguars love the water. They
drink greedily and swim freely. In this country they rambled through
the night across the marshes and prowled along the edges of the ponds
and bayous, catching the capybaras and the caymans; for these small
pond caymans, the jacare-tinga, form part of their habitual food, and
a big jaguar when hungry will attack and kill large caymans and
crocodiles if he can get them a few yards from the water. On these
marshes the jaguars also followed the peccary herds; it is said that
they always strike the hindmost of a band of the fierce little wild
pigs. Elsewhere they often prey on the tapir. If in timber, however,
the jaguar must kill it at once, for the squat, thick-skinned, wedge-
shaped tapir has no respect for timber, as Colonel Rondon phrased it,
and rushes with such blind, headlong speed through and among branches
and trunks that if not immediately killed it brushes the jaguar off,
the claws leaving long raking scars in the tough hide. Cattle are
often killed. The jaguar will not meddle with a big bull; and is
cautious about attacking a herd accompanied by a bull; but it will at
times, where wild game is scarce, kill ever