re are many other plants, and animals too,
which make one think that so it must have been. And now I will tell you
something stranger still. There may have been a time--some people say
that there must--when Africa and South America were joined by land.

Africa and South America! Was that before the heaths came here, or
after?

I cannot tell: but I think, probably after. But this is certain, that
there must have been a time when figs, and bamboos, and palms, and
sarsaparillas, and many other sorts of plants could get from Africa to
America, or the other way, and indeed almost round the world. About the
south of France and Italy you will see one beautiful sarsaparilla, with
hooked prickles, zigzagging and twining about over rocks and ruins,
trunks and stems: and when you do, if you have understanding, it will
seem as strange to you as it did to me to remember that the home of the
sarsaparillas is not in Europe, but in the forests of Brazil, and the
River Plate.

Oh, I have heard about their growing there, and staining the rivers
brown, and making them good medicine to drink: but I never thought there
were any in Europe.

There are only one or two, and how they got there is a marvel indeed. But
now--If there was not dry land between Africa and South America, how did
the cats get into America? For they cannot swim.

Cats? People might have brought them over.

Jaguars and Pumas, which you read of in Captain Mayne Reid's books, are
cats, and so are the Ocelots or tiger cats.

Oh, I saw them at the Zoological Gardens.

But no one would bring them over, I should think, except to put them in
the Zoo.

Not unless they were very foolish.

And much stronger and cleverer than the savages of South America. No,
those jaguars and pumus have been in America for ages: and there are
those who will tell you--and I think they have some reason on their
side--that the jaguar, with his round patches of spots, was once very
much the same as the African and Indian leopard, who can climb trees
well. So when he got into the tropic forests of America, he took to the
trees, and lived among the branches, feeding on sloths and monkeys, and
never coming to the ground for weeks, till he grew fatter and stronger
and far more terrible than his forefathers. And they will tell you, too,
that the puma was, perhaps--I only say perhaps--something like the lion,
who (you know) has no spots. But when he got into the forests, he found
ver