anding in exactly the attitude
of a Shilluk of the White Nile, with the sole of one foot against the
other leg, above the knee. This is a region with extraordinary
possibilities of cattle-raising.

At this ranch there was a tannery; a slaughter-house; a cannery; a
church; buildings of various kinds and all degrees of comfort for the
thirty or forty families who made the place their headquarters; and
the handsome, white, two-story big house, standing among lemon-trees
and flamboyants on the river-brink. There were all kinds of pets
around the house. The most fascinating was a wee, spotted fawn which
loved being petted. Half a dozen curassows of different species
strolled through the rooms; there were also parrots of several
different species, and immediately outside the house four or five
herons, with unclipped wings, which would let us come within a few
feet and then fly gracefully off, shortly afterward returning to the
same spot. They included big and little white egrets and also the
mauve and pearl-colored heron, with a partially black head and many-
colored bill, which flies with quick, repeated wing-flappings, instead
of the usual slow heron wing-beats.

In the warehouse were scores of skins of jaguar, puma, ocelot, and
jaguarundi, and one skin of the big, small-toothed red wolf. These
were all brought in by the cowhands and by friendly Indians, a price
being put on each, as they destroyed the stock. The jaguars
occasionally killed horses and full-grown cows, but not bulls. The
pumas killed the calves. The others killed an occasional very young
calf, but ordinarily only sheep, little pigs, and chickens. There was
one black jaguar-skin; melanism is much more common among jaguars than
pumas, although once Miller saw a black puma that had been killed by
Indians. The patterns of the jaguar-skins, and even more of the
ocelot-skins, showed wide variation, no two being alike. The pumas
were for the most part bright red, but some were reddish gray, there
being much the same dichromatism that I found among their Colorado
kinsfolk. The jaguarundis were dark brownish gray. All these animals,
the spotted jaguars and ocelots, the monochrome black jaguars, red
pumas, and dark-gray jaguarundis, were killed in the same locality,
with the same environment. A glance at the skins and a moment's
serious thought would have been enough to show any sincere thinker that
in these cats the coloration pattern, whether concealing or reveali