48 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 



former State Commissioner of Agriculture, and now 

 State Highway Commissioner, was followed by a 

 panther in Somerset County about the same year. In 

 about 1880, Hon. M. B. Rich, present member of the 

 Pennsylvania Legislature from Clinton County, was 

 followed by a panther on Little Pine Creek, Lycoming 

 County, for a distance of seven miles. H. Hollister, 

 in his "History of the Lackawanna Valley," tells of 

 being followed eight miles by a panther in 18137, in 

 Wayne County. Hollister was in a buggy at the 

 time, but the "Big Cat" could lope as fast as 

 the horse could gallop. C. E. "Doc" Smith, a 

 veteran Clinton County sportsman and naturalist, 

 saw panther tracks as big as a human hand on 

 Fish Dam Run, in the late seventies, when on a 

 hunting trip with Enocli Hastings. Davie Shafifer, 

 who worked in a lumber camp at the "Switches," in 

 Clinton County, near the panther's crossing, heard a 

 ])anther prowling around the shack one winter night 

 in 1880. Being alone, he built a big fire in front of 

 the cabin, sitting by it until daylight. Charles H. 

 Dyce, a successful lumber jobber, saw a panther on 

 the old Clay Pike which severely frightened his horse 

 Dewey, while returning to his home at Ebensburg 

 from his camp at Belsano, Cambria county, on the 

 evening of February 14, 1903. Early in 191-i the 

 carcass of an aged deer was found in the Seven 

 Mountains near Woodward that showed signs of hav- 

 ing been killed and partly eaten by a panther. 



