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 very little food under the trees, only a very few deer; and so he was starved, and dwindled down to the poor little sheep-stealing rogue he is now, of whom nobody is afraid.
Oh, yes! I remember now A.said he and his men killed six in one day.
But do you think it is all true about the pumas and jaguars?
My child, I don't say that it is true: but only that it is likely to be true.