178 Mammalia OF INDIA. 
comparatively a more squat built animal, with a rounder skull without 
the decided occipital ridge. There is a mass of evidence on the point 
of distinctness—Sir Walter Elliot, Horsfield, Hodgson, Sir Samuel 
Baker, Johnson (author of ‘ Field Sports in India’), ‘‘ Mountaineer,” a 
writer in the Bengal Sporting Review, even Blyth and Jerdon, all speak 
to the difference, and yet no decided separation has been made. ‘There 
is in fact too much confusion and too many names. For the larger 
animal Felis pardus is appropriate, and the /eopardus of ‘Temminck, 
Schreber and others is not. Therefore that remains; but what is the 
smaller one to be called? I should say Felis panthera which, being 
common to Asiaand Africa, was probably the panther of the Romans 
and Greeks. Jerdon gives asa synonym /. /ongicaudata (Valenciennes), 
but I find on examination of the skulls of various species that /% 
Jongicaudata has a complete bony orbit which places it in Gray’s genus 
Catolynx, and it is too small for our panther. We might then say that 
we have the pard, the panther, and the leopard in India, and then we 
should be strictly correct. Some sportsmen speak of a smaller panther 
which Kinloch calls the third (second ?) sort of panther, but this differs 
in no respect from the ordinary one, save in size, and it is well known 
that this species varies very much in this respect. I am not singular in 
the views I now express. Years ago Colonel Sykes, who was a well 
known naturalist, said of the pard: “It is a taller, stronger, and 
slighter built animal than the next species, which I consider the 
panther” 
The skull of the pard in some degree resembles that of the jaguar, 
which again is nearest the tiger, whereas that of the panther appears to 
have some affinity to the restricted cats. In disposition all the pards 
and panthers are alike sanguinary, fierce and incapable of attach- 
ment. The tiger is tameable, the panther not so. I have had some 
experience of the young of both, and have seen many others in the 
possession of friends; and though they may, for a time, when young, be 
amusing pets, their innate savageness sooner or later breaks out. They 
are not even to be trusted with their own kind. I have known one to 
turn ona comrade in a cage, kill and devour him, and some of my 
readers may possibly remember an instance of this in the Zoological 
Gardens at Lahore, when, in 1868, a pard one night killed a panther 
which inhabited the same den, and ate a goodly portion of him before 
dawn. ‘They all show more ferocity than the tiger when wounded, and 
a man-eating pard is far more to be dreaded than any other man-eater, 
as will be seen farther on from the history of one I knew. 
Sa 
