We frequently visited a small farm called the Conuco de Bermúdez, situated opposite the Cuchivano crevice. In its moist soil grow bananas, tobacco and several species of cotton trees, especially the one whose cotton is wild nankeen yellow, so common on Margarita Island The owner told us that the ravine was inhabited by jaguars. These animals spend the day in caverns and prowl around human settlements at night. If well fed they reach some 6 feet in length. A year before, one of these cats had devoured a farm horse. In clear moonlight he dragged his prey across the savannah to the foot of an enormous ceiba. The neighing of the dying horse woke up the farm slaves. Armed with lances and machetes (51) they rushed out in the middle of the night. The jaguar, stretched over its victim, waited quietly, and was killed only after a long and stubborn fight. This fact, and many others verified on the spot, prove that the great jaguar of Terra Firma (Felis onca), like the jaguarete of Paraguay and the Asian tiger, does not run away when attacked by man, and is not scared by the number of his enemy. Naturalists today know that Buffon (52) completely failed to recognize the greatest of American cats. What this famous writer says about the cowardice of tigers in the New World relates to the small ocelots (Felis pardalis). In the Orinoco, the American jaguar sometimes leaps into the water to attack Indians in their canoes.