SPOTTING OF LEOPARDS 



whole a silent animal. With an absence of prejudice 

 befitting so great a naturalist, Darwin banqueted off 

 puma during his travels, and found it excellent. Even 

 in this country canine teeth have been recorded from 

 what bore the name of jugged hare, and was at least 

 a dark- coloured and well-flavoured viand. 



THE LEOPARD 



Panther and leopard, or pard, are really quite syn- 

 onymous. But that mighty hunter, the late Sir Samuel 

 Baker, proposed to restrict the use of the name 

 " panther " to leopards of seven feet and upwards in 

 length. The leopard is Asiatic and African in range. 

 It is a perfectly typical cat, and, like so many others, 

 spotted. The nature of the spots enables the leopard 

 to be distinguished at once from the South American 

 jaguar, to which it bears not a little resemblance, 

 though it is true that the latter, being a more perfectly 

 arboreal animal, has shorter legs. The spots in the 

 leopard are in the form of rings of black, where best 

 developed, the centre of the ring being of the same 

 tawny ground colour as the intervals between the 

 spots. In the jaguar the ring-like markings enclose 

 a central black spot. The spotting has been thought 

 by an ingenious speculator in zoology to be a vestige 

 of a former armoured condition. He held that the 

 spotted carnivora were the immediate descendants of 

 creatures with heavy plates imbedded in the skin, like 

 an armadillo or a glyptodon. The last trace of these 

 was to be seen in the black spotting of to-day. But 

 there is really very little to be said for this view. The 

 leopard, like so many other animals, shows at times 

 the phenomenon known as " melanism." That is, the 

 colouring is so generally darkened as to produce black- 

 ness. These black leopards have the reputation of 

 greater ferocity than their paler brethren. Melanic 



98 



