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 revealing,
is of no consequence one way or the other as a survival factor. The
spotted patterns conferred no benefit as compared with the nearly or
quite monochrome blacks, reds, and dark grays. The bodily condition of
the various beasts was equally good, showing that their success in
life, that is, their ability to catch their prey, was unaffected by
their several color schemes. Except white, there is no color so
conspicuously advertising as black; yet the black jaguar had been a
fine, well-fed, powerful beast. The spotted patterns in the forests,
and perhaps even in the marshes which the jaguars so frequently
traversed, are probably a shade less conspicuous than the monochrome
red and gray, but the puma and jaguarundi are just as hard to see, and
evidently find it just as easy to catch prey, as the jaguar and
ocelot. The little fawn which we saw was spotted; the grown deer had