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 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