The missionary told us a story about the jaguars. Some months before our arrival a young jaguar had wounded a child while playing with him. I have verified the facts on the spot; it should interest those who study animal behavior. Two Indian children, a boy and a girl of about eight and nine years of age, were sitting on the grass near the village when a jaguar came out from the jungle and ran round the children, jumping and hiding in the high grass, like our cats. The little boy sensed danger only when the jaguar struck him with its paw until blood began to flow. The little girl chased it off with branches from a tree. The intelligent little boy was brought to us. The jaguar's claw had ripped skin from his forehead. What did this playfulness mean in the jaguar? If the jaguar was not hungry, why did it approach the children? There is something mysterious in the sympathies and hatreds of animals.

The more we study the distribution of organized life on the globe, the more we tend to abandon the hypothesis of migration. The Andes chain divides the whole of South America into two unequal longitudinal parts. At the foot of this chain, on both east and west, we found many plants that were specifically identical. The various passes on the Andes would not let any vegetation from warm regions cross from the Pacific coast to the Amazon banks. When a peak reaches a great height, whether in the middle of low mountains and plains, or in the center of an archipelago raised by volcanic fires, its summit is covered with alpine plants, many of which are also found at immense distances on other mountains under similar climates. Such are the general phenomena of plant distribution.

It is well known that during the first months that Europeans are exposed to the burning heat of the Tropics they live in great danger. The ease of acclimatization seems to be in the inverse ratio of the difference between the mean temperature of the torrid zone and that of the native country of the settler because the irritability of the organs and their vital actions are powerfully modified by the atmospheric heat. We were lucky enough for recently disembarked Europeans to spend that dangerous period in Cumana, a very hot but dry place celebrated for its salubrity.

When we left the ravine that descends from the Imposible we entered a thick jungle cut by numerous rivers, which we easily forded. In the middle of the forest, on the banks of the Cedoìo river, as well as on the southern slopes of the Cocollar, we found wild papaw and orange trees with large, sweet fruit. These are probably the remains of some conucos, or Indian plantations, because the orange is not a native tree; neither are the banana, papaw, maize, cassava and so many other useful plants whose countries of origin are unknown, though they have accompanied man in his migrations from remotest time.

A grass from Switzerland grows on the granite rocks of the Magellan Strait. (74) New Holland contains more than forty European phanerogamous plants. The greater amount of these plants, found equally in the temperate zones of both hemispheres, are completely absent in the intermediary or equinoctial regions, on plains and on mountains. A hairy-leafed violet, which signifies the last of the phanerogamous plants on Tenerife, and long thought specific to that island, can be seen 300 leagues further north near the snowy Pyrenean peaks. Grasses and sedges of Germany, Arabia and Senegal have been recognized among plants collected by Bonpland and myself on the cold Mexican tablelands, on the burning Orinoco banks and on the Andes, and at Quito in the Southern hemisphere. How can one believe that plants migrate over regions covered by sea? How have the germs of life, identical in appearance and in internal structure, developed at unequal distances from the poles and from the oceans, in places that share similar temperatures? Despite the influence of air pressure on the plants' vital functions, and despite the greater or lesser degree of light, it is heat, unequally distributed in different seasons, that must be considered vegetation's most powerful stimulus.

We spent the 23rd of February in the marquis of Toro's house, in the village of Guacara, a large Indian community. The Indians live a life of ease because they have just won a legal case restoring lands disputed by whites. An avenue of carolineas leads from Guacara to Mocundo, a rich sugar plantation belonging to the Moro family. We found a rare garden there with an artificial clump of trees, and, on top of a granitic outcrop near a stream, a pavilion with a mirador or viewpoint. From here you see a splendid panorama over the west of the lake, the surrounding mountains and a wood of palm trees. The sugar-cane fields with their tender green leaves seem like a great plain. Everything suggests abundance, although those who work the land have to sacrifice their freedom.