THE HUNTING LEOPARD. 



"'Come, confess, good brother, 

 You did your best or worst to keep her Duchy, 

 But that the golden Leopard printed in it 

 Such holdfast claws that you perforce again 

 Sank into France." 



Tennyson's Becket, Act II., Scene 2. 



Readers of the works of Sir Walter Scott may 

 remember how in "The Talisman" Sir Kenneth of 

 Scotland is represented as wearing for cognisance 

 the device of a leopard with a collar and broken 

 chain, in allusion to his recent captivity. In actual 

 life that very real person, William the Conqueror, 

 bore for arms two golden lions or leopards (signifying 

 Normandy and Maine) displayed on an appropriate 

 field of blood red. Like the lion, the leopard 

 figured largely in heraldic zoology and even 

 according to the French authorities appeared on the 

 royal arms of England; Henry II. is said to have 

 adopted the device of three leopards (lions according 

 to some) in allusion to his Duchy of Aquitaine, 

 acquired through his wife Eleanor. Henry III. 

 kept in his menagerie at Woodstock the leopards 

 presented to him by his brother-in-law, Frederic of 

 Sicily, onfe of the best known of royal naturalists, 

 who employed these beasts in coursing game. If, 

 as is stated, the English King really adopted them 

 on his coat of arms, the heraldic draughtsmen would 



