This was a well-known jaguar.  He had occasionally indulged in cattle-killing; on one occasion during the floods he had taken up his abode near the ranch-house and had killed a couple of cows and a young steer.  The hunters had followed him, but he had made his escape, and for the time being had abandoned the neighborhood.  In these marshes each jaguar had a wide irregular range and travelled a good deal, perhaps only passing a day or two in a given locality, perhaps spending a week where game was plentiful.  Jaguars love the water.  They drink greedily and swim freely.  In this country they rambled through the night across the marshes and prowled along the edges of the ponds and bayous, catching the capybaras and the caymans; for these small pond caymans, the jacare-tinga, form part of their habitual food, and a big jaguar when hungry will attack and kill large caymans and crocodiles if he can get them a few yards from the water.  On these marshes the jaguars also followed the peccary herds; it is said that they always strike the hindmost of a band of the fierce little wild pigs.  Elsewhere they often prey on the tapir.  If in timber, however, the jaguar must kill it at once, for the squat, thick-skinned, wedge-shaped tapir has no respect for timber, as Colonel Rondon phrased it, and rushes with such blind, headlong speed through and among branches and trunks that if not immediately killed it brushes the jaguar off, the claws leaving long raking scars in the tough hide.  Cattle are often killed.  The jaguar will not meddle with a big bull; and is cautious about attacking a herd accompanied by a bull; but it will at times, where wild game is scarce, kill every other domestic animal.  It is a thirsty brute, and if it kills far from water will often drag its victim a long distance toward a pond or stream; Colonel Rondon had once come across a horse which a jaguar had thus killed and dragged for over a mile.  Jaguars also stalk and kill the deer; in this neighborhood they seemed to be less habitual deer-hunters than the cougars; whether this is generally the case I cannot say.  They have been known to pounce on and devour good-sized anacondas.

In this particular neighborhood the ordinary jaguars molested the cattle and horses hardly at all except now and then to kill calves.  It was only occasionally that under special circumstances some old male took to cattle-killing.  There were plenty of capybaras and deer, and evidently the big spotted cats preferred the easier prey when it was available; exactly as in East Africa we found the lions living almost exclusively on zebra and antelope, and not molesting the buffalo and domestic cattle, which in other parts of Africa furnish their habitual prey.  In some other neighborhoods, not far distant, our hosts informed us that the jaguars lived almost exclusively on horses and cattle.  They also told us that the cougars had the same habits as the jaguars except that they did not prey on such big animals.  The cougars on this ranch never