278 JOUBNAL, BOMBAY XATUBAL HIST. SOt'IETY,\ Vol. XXVI. 



auythiug of a panther which 1 had reason to believe inhabited a neighbour- 

 ing ridge. He professed ignorance until I pointed out the fresh tracks of 

 the animal within ten feet of his plough. 



However, when the people get to know one they are communicative 

 enough, and they are pleasant and helpful. Alter some weeks one becomes 

 known to the countryside, and information is gladly given and assistance 

 offered. For the kind of sport I have indicated tha months of February 

 and March and perhaps half April are the best. Towards the end of April 

 the jungle begins to grow more dense, trees put out their leaves, and the 

 beats are more difficult to arrange. In March and April the cover is 

 sparse, and I would recommend the sportsman to keep a special look-out 

 for the evergreen lokandi bushes ; he will not tind a panther in every bush, 

 but if there is one of these animals about it will probably be in the grateful 

 shade of the lohandi. 



There are less common methods of killing panthers in some parts of the 

 country, as in Mysore where the animal is enclosed with nets and speared 

 when it tries to break out. In Colonel Welsh's Military Reminiscences is a 

 very interesting account of the spearing of panthers and tigers on the 

 Bangalore race-course, where they were released from cages, and speared 

 from horseback by Colonel Gillespie and others in the early part of the 

 last century. This was a form of sport at one time indulged in the 

 Hyderabad Contingent, the caged panthers being caught in a trap baited 

 with a goat. A famous sportsman, Colonel Nightingale, died from the 

 rupture of a blood-vessel when in the act of spearing a panther on the 

 Bolarum plain sixty years ago. I have only once taken part in one of these 

 hunts ; the panther showed no fight, but crouched in a depression of the 

 ground and was speared without difHculty. These animals have not 

 infrequently been put r.p and speared by pigstickers. 



