Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

376 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
The Ibises doubtless undertake these voyages
from the testimony and under the
elders, far more than from any
guidance
inherited
of the
know-
the flights of butterflies
ledge or instinct ; whereas
one would think must be directed by instinct alone,
without any aid from experience.
Many mammals wander far in search of food;
and some that go in bands, such as wild Pigs and
some Monkeys, have known feeding -places at
certain times of the year, when some particular
kind of fruit is in season there ; so that the experienced
Indian hunter often knows in what
direction to bend his steps to fall in with a certain
class of game. It is well known how fond all
animals are of the Alligator pear, which is the fruit
of a large Laurel (Persea gratissima).
cats prefer it to every other kind of food ;
I have seen
and
the
wild cat-like animals are said to be all passionately
fond of it. I have been told by an Indian that in
the forests between the Uaupes and the Japura, he
once came on four Jaguars under a wild Alligator
pear tree, gnawing the fallen fruits and snarling
over them as so many cats might do. I have
gathered flowers of at least four species of Persea,
but was never fortunate enough to find one of them
with ripe fruit ;
so that I have missed seeing the
concourse of animals of many kinds which I am
assured assemble in and under those trees, attracted
by the fruit. \Yhile speaking of fruit-eating carnivora,
it is worth mentioning that dogs in South
America often take naturally to eating fruit. I had
in Peru a fine Spanish spaniel who, so long as he
could get ripe plantains, asked for no better food.
He would hold them between his paws and pull off