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a hut^ a small panther approached in the moonlight to stalk me or the 

 o-oats that were tied np as bait near the head of the bed. I fired and 

 wounded the beast, and it was killed by the inhabitants of a neighbouring 

 village a few days later. 



It is a curious circumstance that when I was in Russia two years after 

 this a very similar series of events happened, of which I gave an account 

 in the Field at the time. There a mj^sterious animal appeared and 

 committed depredations, attacking people in broad daylight. The attacks 

 continued over a considerable period, and detachments of Cossacks were 

 sent after the animal but it was never brought to bag. Similar stories of 

 a were-woK were rife among the superstitious peasantry. The animal 

 may have been a panther escaped from captivity, or a wolf, or possibly a 

 lynx. I was unable to visit the district. There are no panthers in Russia 

 north of the Caucasus, but I have seen tracks of lynxes in the snow in 

 White Russia. These animals do not. however, molest human beings. 

 The only such case T have ever heard of is recorded on page 548, Volume 

 VII of the Journal, Avhere Captain Drake-Brockman relates that in the 

 Mirzapore District three coolies were going along together in single file 

 through the jungle on their way to camp at night. When passing through 

 some high grass, an animal sprang upon the last coolie from behind and 

 fastened itself upon his shoulders. He happened to be walking along at 

 the time with a blanket over his head, and had the presence of mind to turn 

 up the edges and envelop the animal in its folds. The animal fell to the 

 ground, and was smothered with blankets and brought into camp, where 

 it was fovind to be a Red Lynx. The European lynx is larger than the 

 caracal, and the Russian man-eater may have been one of these animals. 



Unarmed natives frequently exhibit remarkable courage in dealing with 

 wild beasts. I read somewhere of a small herd-boy driving a tiger off his 

 cattle dealing the animal a resounding blow on the back with his staff. In 

 a village on the Pein Gunga I was shown the skin of a panther which the 

 inhabitants had assailed with fragments of rock and killed a short time 

 before. In 1894, as recorded by Captain P. Z. Cox in the Journal, a 

 panther was seen to take shelter in a small stack in the open near a village 

 in Kathiawar. A number of Wagher tribesmen turned out armed with 

 sticks and surrounded the stack. After a time the beast broke cover and. 

 seizing a Wagher, bore him to the ground. The others at once attacked 

 the panther with sticks and made it release its hold before serious damage 

 was done. It then turned on another Wagher who stood his ground 

 and closed with the panther, seizing it round the body. The two fell to 

 the ground together. The panther then made for the village, followed by 

 the crowd, when one of the men seized it by the tail, and held on until 

 one of his comrades came up with an axe. and killed it by a blow which 

 spilt open its skull. 



In his " Highlands of Central India," Forsyth gives an account of a 

 man-eating panther which devastated the Seoni District and killed nearly 

 a hundred persons before he was shot by a shikari. He never ate the 

 bodies but merely lapped the blood from the throat. His plan was either 

 to steal into a house at night, and strangle some sleeper on his bed, or to 

 climb into the high platforms from which the watchers guard their fields 

 from deer, und drag oiit his victim. When driven off from an intended 

 victim at one end of a village, he would hurry round to the other side and 

 secure another iu the confusion, A few moments completed his deadly 

 work. Forsyth found a curious myth had afterwards grown round the 

 history of his panther, A man and his wife were travelling to their home 

 from a pilgrimage to Benares, when they met a panther on the road. The 

 woman was terrified, but the man said : " Fear not, I possess a charm by 



