THE PUMA 83

the two species inhabit the same district, they are at
enmity, the puma being the persistent persecutor of
the jaguar, following it 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 oppor-
tunity occurs, springing upon its back, and inflicting
terrible wounds with teeth and claws.’ In the north
the puma is bold enough to attack the grizzly bear.
The puma’s ‘kill’ can generally be recognised by its
having its neck broken, the.animal springing on the
shoulders, and then drawing back the head with one
of its paws until the vertebre break.

He is not the only American cat without spots
or stripes on his mature coat. In the central dis-
tricts of the continent there are the brownish-grey
jaguarondi, and the weasel-like eyra, which is almost
chestnut in colour. In the Eastern Hemisphere there
are also two uniformly-coloured small cats, these
being the flat-headed cat of Malaysia and the
Bornean bay cat. And just as Asia has its black-
spotted snow-leopard, so has South America its
white-and-black, but much smaller, colocollo. The
most southerly cat is the pampas-cat, which is prac-
tically confined to Patagonia, and may be considered
as the representative of the manul, which lives in
the deserts of Central Asia. The chief African
small cat is the serval, which may, however, occa-
sionally attain a length of nearly five feet over all.
Like other cats, it has a tendency to ‘melanism,’
there being a black variety in the Kilima-njaro
district. Melanism, of course, means the change to

blackness, just as albinism means the change to
F 2