THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 17 



Canada Lynx, or big grey wild cat. The Pennsylvania 

 Germans used to call the panther the Bender. Philip 

 Tome, in his "Thirty Years a Hunter," tells of Rice 

 Hamlin killing a panther on the Tiadaghton weighing 

 200 pounds. About 175 pounds was a good average 

 weight for a mature Pennsylvania Lion. Tome, who 

 also was probably the greatest of all Pennsylvania 

 hunters of big game, has recorded many of his hunt- 

 ing adventures in a book entitled ''Thirty Years a 

 Hunter." He w-as a sportsman as well as hunter, 

 never killing recklessly. Though he makes no re- 

 capitulation of panthers which fell to his unerring 

 bullets, his descendants estimate that he killed at least 

 500 of these noble animals. One of his grandsons, 

 George L. Tome, a noted hunter, resides at Corydon, 

 in Warren County. Old Mifflin County hunters 

 described a panther killed by John Reager and 

 William Dellett near Milroy in 1869 as being so 

 large that when the carcass was thrown across tne 

 shoulders of a horse the head dragged on one side 

 and the tail on the other. According to the Pennsyl- 

 vania hunters the specimens of felis couguar now seen 

 in Zoological gardens have faded coats, or else the 

 western individuals are plainer colored. It is said 

 that the winter sunlight shining on the many tinted 

 coats of the Pennsylvania lion was a sight beautiful 

 to behold. Even in death the hides retain the rich 

 fulvous, fawn, orange and lemon tints for forty years 

 or more. George G. Hastings vividly describes a 

 magnificent male panther which sunned' itself and 



