ORDER CARNIVORA: CARNIVORES . 283 



The skins are sold and the meat is used for food. (Ministry of 

 Agriculture and Zoological Garden, Cairo, in litt., January, 1937.) 



Indian Cheetah; Indian Hunting Leopard 



ACINONYX JUBATUS vENATicus (Hamilton Smith) 



F[elis] Venatica Hamilton Smith, in Griffith's Cuvier's Anim. Kingdom, 



vol. 5, p. 166, 1827. ("India.") 

 FIGS.: Jour. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. 37, no. 4, suppl., pi. 46, 1935 (venati- 



cust); Bodenheimer, 1935, pi. 9 (venations?). 



The Cheetah is nearly extinct in India and has become very rare 

 in southwestern Asia generally. 



The general color is pale brownish yellow to bright rufous-fawn 

 above and on the sides; almost everywhere with small round black 

 spots ; chin and throat buffy white, unspotted ; a black line from the 

 anterior corner of the eye to the upper lip, and another less marked 

 (or a row of spots in some specimens) from the posterior corner of 

 the eye to below the ear; ear black outside, base and margins tawny; 

 spots on tail passing toward the end into imperfect rings. Head and 

 body, about 4.5 feet; tail, 2.5 feet. (Blanford, 1888, p. 91.) 



The Cheetahs ranging from Baluchistan, Persia, and Iraq to Syria, 

 Palestine, and Arabia are here included provisionally with the 

 Indian form (A. j. venaticus). 



In India the Cheetah is all but extinct in the wild state. It once ranged 

 from the confines of Bengal through the plains of the United Provinces, 

 the Punjab and Rajputana, through Central India and the Deccan. ... A 

 Cheetah was killed in 1918 and another in 1919 in the Mirzapur District of 

 the United Provinces. Five Cheetahs are recorded as having been obtained 

 in this Province during the previous twenty-five years. In the Central 

 Provinces, the Cheetah appears to have been not uncommon at one time in 

 the Berars. Three were shot in the Melghat Forest area in 1890 and one 

 in 1894 and one at Wano in 1895. Rumours of their existence in parts of 

 Berar, the Seoni Plateau and Saugor still persist. They were apparently once 

 common around Hyderabad, Deccan. The only part of the Bombay Presi- 

 dency where Cheetahs were known to occur recently is the tract of rugged 

 country known as the Tanga in the centre of the province of Kathiawar. In 

 1884 it was estimated that there were not more than twenty of these animals 

 in this area. A female and four cubs were shot at Rajkot in 1894. (Anonymous, 

 1935, p. 147.) 



"In the case of India, the cheetah appears to be verging on ex- 

 tinction, if not already extinct, as a wild animal. At all events the 

 Mammal Survey of India . . . does not seem to have secured a 

 single specimen; and ... it seems that Indian cheetahs are now 

 practically unobtainable, and that those used for the chase are 

 imported from Africa." (Pocock, 1927, pp. 18-19.) 



"I have heard that Princes and others who want cheetahs for 

 hunting purposes now get them from Hyderabad. But the officer 



