1890 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
and Assam, and many other hilly parts. At Colgong, Mr. Barnes 
informed him that many cases of human beings killed by pards were 
known in the Bhaugulpore district. At Seonee we had one which 
devastated a tract of country extending to about 1& miles in diameter. 
He began his work in 1857 by carrying off a follower of the Thakur of 
Gurwarra, on whom we were keeping a watch during the troublous times 
of the mutiny. My brother-in-law, Colonel Thomson and I, went after 
him under the supposition that it was a tiger that had killed the man, 
and it was not till we found the body at the bottom of a rocky ravine 
that we discovered it was a pard. During the beat he came out before 
us, went on, and was turned back by an elephant and came out again a 
third time before us; but we refrained from firing as we expected a 
man-eating tiger. I left Seonee for two years to join the Irregular 
Corps to which I had been posted, and after the end of the campaign, 
returned again to district work, and found that the most dreaded man- 
eater in the district was the pard whose life we had spared. ‘There was 
a curious legend in connection with him, like the superstitious stories of 
Wehr wolves in Northern Europe. I have dealt fully with it in “‘ Seonee,” 
and Forsyth has also given a version of it in the ‘ Highlands of Central 
India,’ as he came to the district soon after the animal was destroyed. 
Some of the aborigines of the Satpura Range are reputed to have the 
power of changing themselves into animals at will, and back again into 
the human form. ‘The story runs, that one day one of these men, 
accompanied by his wife, came to a glade in the jungle where some 
nilgai were feeding. ‘The woman expressed a wish for some meat, on 
which the husband gave her a root to hold, and to give him to smell on 
his return. He changed himself into a pard, killed one of the nilgai, 
and came bounding back for the root ; but the terrified woman lost her 
nerve, flung away the charm, and rushed from the place. The husband 
hunted about wildly for the root, but in vain ; and then inflamed with 
rage he pursued her, and tore her to pieces and continued to wreak his 
vengeance on the human race. Such was the history of the man- 
eating panther of Kahani, as related in the popular traditions of the 
country, and certainly everything in the career of this extraordinary 
animal tended to foster the unearthly reputation he had gained. 
Ranging over a circle, the radius of which may be put at eighteen miles, 
no one knew when and where he might be found. He seemed to kill 
for killing’s sake, for often his victims—at times three in a single night 
—would be found untouched, save for the fatal wound in the throat. 
The watcher on the high machaun, the sleeper on his cot in the 
midst of a populous village, were alike his prey. ‘The country was 
demoralized ; the bravest hunters refused to go after him ; wild pigs and 
deer ravaged the fields ; none would dare to watch the growing crops. 
If it had been an ordinary panther who would have cared? Had not 
