432 CAT TRIBE 



grunts, but their ordinary cry, repeated three or four times in the same 

 key, is extremely harsh. Although leopards, like lions, are quite 

 content to eat carrion sometimes, they have undoubtedly a greater 

 craving for warm blood. In hill-country bushbuck, duikers, monkeys, 

 hyraxes, etc., form their principal prey, but in the low country larger 

 animals are overpowered. 



" Leopards cover great distances at night in search of prey ; and 

 when quartered near native villages exact a heavy toll of calves, goats, 

 and dogs, while, when among a flock of sheep or goats, they will strike 

 down their victims right and left, as if impelled by sheer love of 

 slaughter. They display great cunning and boldness in abstracting 

 dogs — to the flesh of which they are very partial — from a village or 

 camp ; but I have never met with a man-eating leopard in Africa. 

 Their mode of attack is very similar to that of a lion. Either they 

 lie in wait in the jungle on a river-bank and seize their victims as they 

 come to drink, or fairly stalk them up-wind, advancing in the stealthiest 

 manner, and noiselessly threading their way through the densest and 

 most intricate jungle. The final rush is made with lightning-like 

 rapidity and in silence, the throat being usually seized and the jugular 

 veins severed, although the death-wounds are often given in the back 

 of the head and neck. Sometimes the neck is broken ; careful 

 observation has, however, convinced me that this is not done — as by 

 a lion — intentionally, but that the victim, standing on uneven ground 

 when attacked, has rushed forward, and that the weight of the leopard 

 on its neck has brought it down on its head and caused dislocation. A 

 lion achieves the same result by dragging the head of its prey down- 

 wards, and seizing it by the nose with one paw. If two leopards 

 attack, the neck and shoulders of the victim are seized ; but I cannot 

 recollect an instance of these animals seizing the flanks. After killing 

 it, leopards drag their prey, if possible, to the nearest thicket, where 

 opening it at the flank, they disembowel it as neatly as would a lion, 

 and partially bury or cover over the entrails. Having eaten the heart 

 and lungs, they attack, not the buttocks, but the breast-bone, eating all 

 the meat, the softer bones, and the cartilage, the ears and nose being 

 often bitten off, and the tongue torn out. Leopards seldom dismember 

 large portions of a carcase, as will lions, in order to carry them off and 

 devour them leisurely under a bush or tree, but set-to at the carcase 

 and eat it where it lies. Should they suspect that it has been interfered 

 with, they seldom return to the ' kill,' though they may drag it up a 

 tree. Leopards are, indeed, most agile climbers, and the weights they 

 often carry when so doing testify to their great strength ; I have seen, 



