brand, that will save him. Scarcely any thing but the celerity of a musket-ball will anticipate its murderous purpose. The aim must be quick and steady; and life or death depends on the result.

Many parts of South America which were once grievously pestered with Jaguars, are now almost freed from them, or are only occasionally troubled with their destructive incursions.

D'Azara was once informed, that a Jaguar had attacked a Horse near the place where he was. He ran to the spot, and found that the Horse was killed, and part of his breast devoured; and that the Jaguar, having probably been disturbed, had fled. He then caused the body of the Horse to be drawn within musket-shot of a tree, in which he intended to pass the night, anticipating that the Jaguar would return in the course of it to its victim: but while he was gone to prepare for his adventure, the animal returned from the opposite side of a large and deep river, and having seized the Horse with its teeth, drew it for about sixty paces to the water, swam across with its prey, and then drew it into a neighbouring wood, in sight the whole time of the person who was left by D'Azara concealed, to observe what might happen before his return.

The husbandmen frequently fasten two Horses together while grazing; and it is confidently stated that the Jaguar will sometimes kill one, and in spite of the exertions of the survivor, draw them both into the wood. This is a performance Molina also attributes to the Puma. It may be reconciled by supposing, that the extreme terror of the surviving Horse paralyzes its efforts.

Generally speaking, particularly during day, the Jaguar will not attack a man; but if it be pressed by hunger, or have previously tasted human flesh, its appetite will overcome its fears; and during the residence of d'Azara in Paraguay, no less than six men were destroyed by this

formidable beast, two of whom were at the time before a large fire.

The central spot and short tail of the Jaguar will, with but little observation, soon enable any one to distinguish that transatlantic species from those of the old world, however confused, to which it is nearly allied, and to which we shall now proceed.

We shall treat of the Panther and the Leopard conjointly, necessarily so indeed, as the distinctness of the two on the one hand, or the identity of both subject only to variety on the other, seems still in some degree problematical.

The history, says our author, in his Ossemens Fossiles, of the great Cats with round spots of the Old World, is more difficult to elucidate than that of the Jaguar, on account of their mutual resemblance, and of the vague manner in which authors have spoken of them.

The Greeks knew one of these from the time of Homer, which they named Pardalis, as Menelaus is said in the Iliad, to have covered himself with the spotted skin of this animal. This they compared, on account of its strength and its cruelty to the Lion, and represented as having its skin varied with spots. Its name even was synonymous with spotted. The Greek translators of the Scriptures used the name Pardalis, as synonymous with Namer, which word, with a slight modification, signifies the Panther, at present, among the Arabians.

The name Pardalis gave place among the Romans to those of Panthera and Varia. These are the words they used during the two first ages, whenever they had occasion to translate the Greek passages which mentioned the Pardalis, or when they themselves mentioned this animal.

They sometimes used the word Pardus, either for Pardalis, or for Namer. Pliny even says, that Pardus signified the male of Panthera, or Varia.

So reciprocally the Greeks translated Panthera by the VOL. II,

2 I

word Pardalis. The word Panthera, although of Greek root, did not then preserve the sense of the word Пaven, which is constantly marked as different from Pardalis, and by Oppian is said to be small and of little courage. The Romans, nevertheless, sometimes employed it to translate the word Пavenp, and the Greeks of the lower empire, induced by the resemblance of the names, have probably attributed to the Panther some of the characters which they found among the Romans, on the Panthera.

Bocchart, without knowing these animals himself, has collected and compared with much sagacity every thing that the ancients and the orientalists have said about them. He endeavours to clear up these apparent contradictions by a passage in which Oppian characterizes two species of Pardalis, the great with a shorter tail than the less.

It is to this smaller species that Bocchart would apply the word Πανθηρ. But there are found in the country known to the ancients, two animals with spotted skins; the common Panther of naturalists, and another animal, which, after Daubenton, is named the Guepard, (the Hunting Leopard.)

The Arabian authors have there also known and distinguished two of these animals; the first under the name of Nemer, the other under that of Fehd, and although Bocchart considers the Fehd to be the Lynx, "I rather incline to think," says the Baron," it is the Hunting Leopard."

The Guepard, then, would be the Panther, and there is nothing stated by the Greeks repugnant to this idea.

Sometimes they associate it with the great animals, sometimes with the small, which seems to imply that it was of middling stature. Its young were born blind, says Aristotle; it inhabited Africa with the Thos, according to Herodotus; its skin was spotted, and its natural disposition tameable, as we are informed by Eustathius.

'Ine two last traits appear inapplicable to any other