g such a fine-looking thing. I had, however, a knife made after the
native fashion, and afterwards gave it to him in commemoration of the
event.

In Mysore there are two kinds of panthers. One, the largest of the two, is
called by the natives the Male Kiraba, or forest panther, and confines
itself generally to the forest regions, while the smaller kind haunts the
neighbourhood of villages. The black panther, which is of rare occurrence,
is merely an offshoot of the other varieties. The panther, in consequence
of its tree-climbing habits, and general aptitude for suddenly
disappearing, is of all animals the most disappointing to the sportsman,
so much so, indeed, that I soon gave up going out after them. Though it
has great strength, and from the amazing suddenness of its movements,
great means at its disposal for making successful attacks on man, it
seems, unlike the tiger, bear, and wild boar, to have no confidence in its
own powers, and though in one sense showing great daring by attacking dogs
even when they are in the house and quite close to people, is, when
attacked itself, of all animals the most cowardly--a fact which the
natives are well aware of, and which is proved by the small number of
people killed by panthers in proportion to the number of them accounted
for. The only way of insuring success when hunting panthers is to have a
small pack of country-bred dogs of so little value that when one or two of
them may chance to be killed by the panther the matter is of little or no
consequence. The pack will soon find the panther, and perhaps run him up a
tree, and thus give the sportsman a good, or rather certain chance of
killing the animal. In this way a manager of mine was very successful in
bagging panthers. I have some reason to suppose that the panther, when
severely wounded, sometimes feigns death, and give the following incident
with the view of eliciting further information on the subject.

Two natives in my neighbourhood once sat up over a kill, and apparently
killed a panther--at least it lay as if dead. They then with the aid of
some villagers, who afterwards arrived on the scene of action, began to
skin the panther, and the man who had wounded it took hold of the tail to
stretch the body out when the panther came suddenly to life, and bit the
man in the leg. One of the people present then fired at the panther,
apparently killing it outright. The man, who had been only slightly
bitten, then again took