"108 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1891. 



While we punted away the crocodiles invariably brought about their ov\n destruc 

 tion, by entangling themselves in the weeds until they were unable to move. 

 Finding that we could not haul them into the boat, we landed and dragged them 

 out on to the shore, when a shot in the neck put an end to their misery. 



"Occasionally the crocodiles would see the boat approaching them and make off 

 as fast as they could along the bottom. It was most exciting work then punting 

 after them. It frequently happened that as soon as we caught them up they 

 would purposely stir up the mud at the bottom, so that we could not see them. 



" We managed to get 18 crocodiles in this way, out of two tanks, but in no case 

 did they exceed 9 feet in length. They were all the ordinary thick-snouted 

 Crocodile or Muggur {Crocodilus palustris). 



" The harpoon we used was of this description : — 



" If it struck against the scales or plates on the back of the reptiles, the harpoon 

 would not penetrate, but in no case did a crocodile succeed in getting off after the 

 spear-head had once been well driven in near the hind or fore quarters." 



IV.— A MAN-EATING PANTHER, 



I BEG to forward three fingers of a boy of about 12 years of age, found in the 

 stomach of a man-eating panther, shot on the 13th of last month. He was the 

 only son of a Banjari woman, who with some 10 or 12 others, had put up in 

 the open for the night, on her way to the Nizam's Dominions, in a tigerish- 

 looking country, surrounded by hills covered with brushwood. It had rained a 

 a little during the first part of the night, and the partjr did not, though 

 fatigued after their journey, get to sleep till after midnight. Shortly after, 

 the mother was disturbed by feeling the covering over her boy roughly dragged 

 away, and, missing her son, who had gone to sleep by her side, raised an alarm, 

 but the intense darkness of the night, and in absence of a light, rendered 

 anything like a snceessf ul search impossible ; and nothing remained for the 

 poor mother, stunned with the horrible fear of what had happened, but to 

 wait for the break of day, which, to her, came slowly indeed, and when it did 

 come, afforded no relief, but brought with it the confirmation of her worst 

 fears that her son had been carried off. Spots of blood here and there, and 

 th • murks on the grass of a heavy dragging of a holy, simplified the tracking, 

 that was taken up by a local shikarry ; and in the dry bed of a small mountain 

 stream, close by, the skull was found stripped of its flesh and hair. Further and 



