Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1925-08-07

: AtAASnt 4Catns
There is not only woeful ignor
ance Of habits. the need Of assuming
to know calling for the utmost sup
e position often wide of facts, but evel
the matter Of geographic distribution
2 is as little understood and looked
! into-the more wonder when any
one may pick up a geological bool
of reference and set himself and hi
-freaders Alright. Those two great eat
the tiger and the jaguar-are mos
: often and continually thrust out Of
: their habitat
! When Col Roosevelt planned his
| African trip there was very natural
) incentive to anticipate him, particu
J larry by the so-called yellow jour
mails. One Sunday edition Of New
! York paper told. with the aid of full
page pictures, of a hunter in Africa
who had shut himself in q cage with
lin the jungle the better to come in
touch with the denizens of the for
est This was related as an actual
experience, but it was not mentioned
hat somebody must have let loose a
zoo thereabout, for that strictly des-
ert animal. the lion, roared around
the stronghold; tigers, no doubt
brought especially from India for the
purpose, leaped upon the cage; jagu-
airs got over from South America to
do some yelling. and leopards, the
only great cats properly placed, were
also in evidence.
The deponent, in Golfers. very
fully criticized this at the time, but
the nature literatti. even the book
makers, must have entirely overlook
ed it. Several loose references have
since been made to hunting tigers in
Africa. but the most remarkable was
a story in The Saturday Evening
Post. about five years back. The an
imal-loving hero, after a menagerie
training, goes to India and with a
rapier fences against king cobra
that all but defeats his skill, encoun-
{ tiers a python that was so swift as
to have oyertaken a native boy run
ming and assures himself of protec-
ton against a tiger by relying on a
large dog-all bunk of the most glar-
ing character Finally he encounters
jaguar and witnesses a fight be-
tween it and a bear.
Almost as glaring is the contents
I of a recent book, CLAW and Fang, -
reviewed in the Literary Digest. One
is little at sea as to whether the
author or the reviewer is most at
fault. India is the country mention
ed. but it is quite hopelessly mixed
with Africa, for all the names and
most of the creatures and situations
are strictly African: the lion Ngony-
anna, the hunter Mahamba. the wa
ter holes, the water buck (meaning
water box, OF eourse) But the whine
of the bear is heard, which fts India
only. except that in Africa the OBJ
server might have been in the Atlas
Mountains AS to bears habitually
whining, there may be some doubt
Sand grouse are also mentioned;
they are chiefly European and Asia
tic, not African, except along the ex-
IRENE northern coast; which infor-
nation TALES somewhat with the
bear, but conflicts with the water
buck and present-day lion.
However, all these Inconsistencies
in that book as to habitat are quite
trifiing when it comes to the scream
of the jaguar. which is heard along
with the snarI of the leopard The
jaguar does not scream; its vocal ex-
pressions consist OF gutteral grunts
and a coughing roar not unlike that
of the lion. though not so loud. and
if it could scream in India it would
have to be in the Calcutta zoo. or
escaped therefrom, or shout its pro-
tests so loudly as to be heard over
seven thousand miles of land and
water.
When will the rush-in-to-print ma
ture story-tellers treat this big cat as
other than a globe-troter and recog-
nize its limited habitat within the
warm countries of the western main
land continent?
But even among the bona fide nat
uralists who write scientifically, the
jaguar has received a reputation not
deserved. for in all the books. as
1.-THE Cat, The Felidae. American
Quadrupeds. several extensive zool-
ogies. the encyclopedias, ~Americau
Animals and the high-sounding
American Natural History, which
is only half of what it pretends tc
be. the big, yellow, black-spotted
American cat is persistently described
10 be the one largest of the New
World Felidae. Not one record Of
the size of either captured or killed
specimens for geological gardens OF
museum mounts comes anywhere
near equaling in length. height OF
weight the largest puma; the latter
indeed, almost doubling those of tn,
: jaguar, and the naturalist Hudson
states that the puma, in the La Plat;
country, is clearly the master Of tn,
: wo when they come in contact
Animal behavior is as YET. the leas
$ understood, the most difficult to com
prehend in its wide variations of al