II THE FATHER OF GAME 39 



of intelligence quite different from the flat-headed, 

 brutish, ferocity of many feline countenances. 

 Yet, when the ears are laid flat back, the eyes 

 half closed, the lips withdrawn in a snarl, and the 

 animal crouched, with muscles tense and the corn- 

 colored claws half-protruded, in readiness for a 

 spring, its aspect is sufficiently terrifying. 



This animal, nevertheless, is probably the most 

 cowardly and least dangerous of all the larger car- 

 nivores. The South Americans dread it much less 

 than the jaguar, and the Indians of our continent 

 would far rather meet it than a bear. The in- 

 stances are few where it has seriously resisted men 

 when it could get away, and then it was almost in- 

 variably in defence of its young ; and still fewer 

 are the instances where it has made an unpro- 

 voked attack. One has often, it is true, ap- 

 proached a lone wood-chopper, or dogged the trail 

 of a hunter or traveller through the wilderness, or 

 prowled about some camp-fire or remote frontier 

 cabin ; but this behavior was evidently dictated in 

 some cases by extreme hunger, but more often by 

 mere curiosity and desire for company, and has 

 been rarely followed by a harmful attack, though 

 credible cases of its springing upon children have 

 been recorded. 



To this timidity is largely due the easy and early 

 extinction of the beast in the eastern half of the 

 Union, where, had it possessed the courage and 

 power of resistance shown by the Old World leop- 



