WITH THE COUGAR HOUNDS 17 



its name is unsettled. In the Eastern States it is usually 

 called panther or painter; in the Western States, moun- 

 tain lion, or, toward the South, Mexican lion. The Span- 

 ish-speaking people usually call it simply lion. It is, 

 however, sometimes called cougar in the West and South- 

 west of our country, and in South America, puma. As 

 it is desirable where possible not to use a name that is 

 misleading and is already appropriated to some entirely 

 different animal, it is best to call it cougar. 



The cougar is a very singular beast, shy and elusive 

 to an extraordinary degree, very cowardly and yet blood- 

 thirsty and ferocious, varying wonderfully in size, and 

 subject, like many other beasts, to queer freaks of char- 

 acter in occasional individuals. This fact of individual 

 variation in size and temper is almost always ignored 

 in treating of the animal; whereas it ought never to be 

 left out of sight. 



The average writer, and for the matter of that, the 

 average hunter, where cougars are scarce, knows little 

 or nothing of them, and in describing them merely draws 

 upon the stock of well-worn myths which portray them 

 as terrible foes of man, as dropping on their prey from 

 trees where they have been lying in wait, etc., etc. Very 

 occasionally there appears an absolutely trustworthy ac- 

 count like that by Dr. Hart Merriam in his "Adirondack 

 Mammals." But many otherwise excellent writers are 

 wholly at sea in reference to the cougar. Thus one of 

 the best books on hunting in the far West in the old days 

 is by Colonel Dodge. Yet when Colonel Dodge came to 

 describe the cougar he actually treated of it as two species, 



