Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/378

368 "Lawson relates, that those which formerly lived on the salt waters in Carolina, fed on oysters, which they nimbly snatched when the shell opened; but that sometimes the paw was caught, and held till the return of the tide, in which the animal, though it swims well, was sometimes drowned. His art in catching crabs is still more extraordinary. Standing on the borders of the waters where this shell-fish abounds, he keeps the end of his tail floating on the surface, which the crab seizes, and he then leaps forward with his prey, and destroys it in a very artful manner." In South America, the art is given to two other very cunning creatures, the monkey and the jaguar. I have been informed by one of the English explorers in British Guiana, that it is a current story there, that the monkey catches fish by letting them take hold of the end of his tail. Southey, quoting from a manuscript description of the district flooded by the River Paraguay, called the Lago Xarayes, says "when the floods are out the fish leave the river to feed upon certain fruits: as soon as they hear or feel the fruit strike the water, they leap to catch it as it rises to the surface, and in their eagerness spring into the air. From this habit the Ounce has learnt a curious stratagem; he gets upon a projecting bough, and from time to time strikes the water with his tail, thus imitating the sound which the fruit makes as it drops, and as the fish spring towards it, he catches them with his paw." More recently, the story has been told again by Mr. Wallace: "The jaguar, say the Indians, is the most cunning animal in the forest: he can imitate the voice of almost every bird and animal so exactly, as to draw them towards him: he fishes in the rivers, lashing the water with his tail to imitate falling fruit, and when the fish approach, hooks them up with his claws." It may be objected against the use of the tail-fishing story as mythological evidence, that there may possibly be some foundation for it in actual fact; and it is indeed hardly more astonishing, for instance, than the jaguar's turning a number of river-turtles on their backs to be eaten at his leisure, a story which Humboldt accepts as true. But the way in which