II THE FATHER OF GAME 43 



of southern Argentina; and it is interesting to 

 read the following from " Gold Diggings at Cape 

 Horn," by an excellent observer, John R. Spears, 

 the most recent writer upon Patagonia : 



" The lonely wayfarer is not often found there 

 afoot, but men have been on the desert unmounted, 

 and the panthers have come to play around them 

 too. But it is not as a predatory cat that they 

 come. It is as a playful kitten. Individual pan- 

 thers play by themselves old ones as well as 

 young by the hour. They will chase and paw 

 and roll an upturned bush or a round rock or 

 any moving thing, and lacking that will pretend 

 to sneak up on an unwary game, crouching the 

 while behind a bush or rock for concealment, to 

 spring out at last and land on a hump of sand or 

 a shadow. Then they turn round and do the 

 same thing over again. When it is in this frame 

 of mind, if a lone human being comes along, the 

 panther is as glad to see him as a petted cat to 

 see its mistress. It purrs and rolls over before 

 him, and gallops from side to side, and makes no 

 end of kitten-like motions, and all because of the 

 exuberance of its youthful spirits. . . . The plains- 

 men of all Argentina call the panther by a name 

 which means ' friend of man.' " 



The young are born as early as February in 

 Central America, where a second litter may occa- 

 sionally be produced, as it is stated that kittens 

 have been taken in August; but in the northern 



