ograph on one of
these trees.

We have seen tigers stretching their enormous limbs in this manner, and
were recently interested in watching the proceedings of two beautiful
young jaguars now in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park; they are
scarcely half-grown and as playful as kittens. After chasing and
tumbling each other over several times, they went as by mutual consent
to the post of their cage, and there carefully and with intensely placid
countenances scraped away with their claws as they would have done
against the trees had they been in their native woods. This proceeding
satisfactorily concluded, they swarmed up and down the post, appearing
to vie with each other as to which should be first. The six young
leopards are equally graceful and active with the above, and the
elegance and quickness of their movements cannot fail to command
admiration. They seem to be particularly fond of bounding up and down
the trees, and sometimes rest in the strangest attitudes, stuck in the
fork of a bough, or sitting, as it were; astride of one, with their hind
legs hanging down. M. Sonnini bears testimony to the extraordinary
climbing powers of the jaguar; "For," says he, "I have seen, in the
forests of Guiana, the prints left by the claws of the jaguar on the
smooth bark of a tree from forty to fifty feet in height, measuring
about a foot and a half in circumference, and clothed with branches near
its summit alone. It was easy to follow with the eye the efforts which
the animal had made to reach the branches; although his talons had been
thrust deeply into the body of the tree, he had met with several slips,
but had always recovered his ground; and attracted, no doubt, by some
favorite prey, had at length succeeded in gaining the very top!"

The following is the common mode of killing the jaguar in Tucuman: The
Guacho, armed with a long strong spear, traces him to his den, and
having found it, he places himself in a convenient position to receive
the animal on the point of the spear at the first spring; dogs are then
sent in, and driving him out he springs with fury upon the Guacho, who,
fixing his eyes on those of the jaguar, receives his onset kneeling, and
with such consummate coolness that he hardly ever fails. At the moment
that the spear is plunged into the animal's body the Guacho nimbly
springs on one side, and the jaguar, already impaled on the spear, is
speedily dispatched.

In one instance the animal lay stretch