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" cheeta. I have seen a cheeta's skin which after tanning was nine 

 " feet six inches in length ; it may have been stretched but it did not 

 " appear to have been much so." 



My friend is a far better sportsman than I am ; but with every 

 regard for his opinion, I question whether the two animals he de- 

 scribes are distinct species. Difference of ground, climate and cover 

 should, I argue, be sufficient reasons to cause difference in shape or 

 color. The distinction he remarks in the shape of the spots in pard s 

 with retractile claws, I certainly have not remarked ; of course, I 

 mean in the true panther * f. pardus' not " jubata." 



If there be two varieties of panthers, the distinction exists I think, 

 not so much in color or markings as in the shape of the skull which 

 in the smaller and stouter animals has to me always appeared shorter 

 and rounder or more bull-dog-like than in the larger. Mr. Walter 

 Elliot, at pages 98 and 99 of Jerdou, mentions this difference of 

 character in the skulls. 



If I be right in my idea on this subject, perhaps my former remark 

 at page 28 regarding the difference in the shape of the skulls of 

 the small black panther, now in the People's Park at Madras, and 

 the larger one sent from Bangalore' to the Zoological Gardens, 

 Regent's Park, may also be sound ; and I may therefore be right in 

 thinking : first, that black panthers are only a freak of nature; and 

 secondly, that perhaps there is a difference in the shape of the head 

 between larger and smaller pards. 



If however black panthers are only accidental, it is odd that no 

 one has yet come on a black specimen of one of the larger cats f. 

 11 leo," or " tigris." 



In corroboration of Jerdon's remark, page 100, that " like the 

 " tiger, the leopard will, if hungry, eat any dead carcass he can 

 " find." I may quote the following extract from the letter I 

 have just mentioned : " About a month ago I killed a nilgai in the 

 " low country, and as it was late, I covered it up with branches ; in 

 " the morning I found it had been visited by a panther, which had 

 " exerted a strength equal to more than six men ; it had torn off 

 " the hind quarter, tearing the haunch bone out of the socket. I 

 ' ' followed its tracks for more than a mile, the proof of its having 



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