g, after the manner of the bears and opossums.
While climbing a tree, its claws can be heard crackling along the bark
as it mounts upward. It sometimes lies "squatted" along a horizontal
branch, a lower one, for the purpose of springing upon deer, or such
other animals as it wishes to prey upon. The ledge of a cliff is also a
favourite haunt, and such are known among the hunters as
"panther-ledges." It selects such a position in the neighbourhood of
some watering-place, or, if possible, one of the salt or soda springs
(licks) so numerous in America. Here it is more certain that its vigil
will not be a protracted one. Its prey--elk, deer, antelope, or
buffalo--soon appears beneath, unconscious of the dangerous enemy that
cowers over them. When fairly within reach, the cougar springs, and
pouncing down upon the shoulders of the victim, buries its claws in the
flesh. The terrified animal starts forward, leaps from side to side,
dashes into the papaw thickets, or breasts the dense cane-brake, in
hopes of brushing off its relentless rider. All in vain! Closely
clasping its neck, the cougar clings on, tearing its victim in the
throat, and drinking its blood throughout the wild gallop. Faint and
feeble, the ruminant at length totters and falls, and the fierce
destroyer squats itself along the body, and finishes its red repast. If
the cougar can overcome several animals at a time, it will kill them
all, although but the twentieth part may be required to satiate its
hunger. Unlike the lion in this, even in repletion it will kill. With
it, destruction of life seems to be an instinct.

There is a very small animal, and apparently a very helpless one, with
which the cougar occasionally quarrels, but often with ill success--this
is the Canada porcupine. Whether the cougar ever succeeds in killing
one of these creatures is not known, but that it attacks them is beyond
question, and its own death is often the result. The quills of the
Canada porcupine are slightly barbed at their extremities; and when
stuck into the flesh of a living animal, this arrangement causes them to
penetrate mechanically deeper and deeper as the animal moves. That the
porcupine can itself discharge them to some distance, is not true, but
it is true that it can cause them to be easily _detached_; and this it
does when rashly seized by any of the predatory animals. The result is,
that these remarkable spines become fast in the tongue, jaws, and l