NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 235 



early days but was nevertheless evidently troublesome to the 

 first white settlers on our shores, for bounties were offered and 

 many were killed though with little record. At first they were 

 thought to be young lions, and one is so reported by John 

 Josselyn at Cape Ann in earlier times. As early as 1694 Con- 

 necticut offered a bounty of 20 shillings apiece for catamounts 

 and as late as 1769 paid for four or five. Massachusetts first 

 offered a reward of 40 shillings for killing these animals in 1742. 

 In 1753 this was increased to 4. Probably by the time of the 

 Revolution panthers were fairly well gone from the three 

 southern States of New England. Wood, in his early account 

 of New England, tells that "Plymouth men have traded for 

 Lyons' skins in former times, " but they seem to have been few 

 in eastern Massachusetts and were early driven back. In the 

 Boston Gazette of April 20, 1741, is a notice of a strange animal 

 exhibited at the Greyhound Tavern in Roxbury that had been 

 "caught in the woods about 80 miles to the westward," hence 

 in western Massachusetts. "It has a tail like a Lyon, its legs 

 are like Bears, its claws like an Eagle, its Eyes like a tyger." 

 It was "called a Cattamount." Judd, in his "History of 

 Hadley, Massachusetts," 186^?, mentions that one was killed 

 by some Northampton hunters in 1764, and others were said 

 to have been shot in later years in Hampshire. Emmons in 

 1840 regarded the species as then extirpated in Massachusetts, 

 yet one was killed in 1847 or 1848 in West Greenwich, R. I., 

 was mounted and for many years was preserved in the museum 

 of the Providence Franklin Society, and then was secured by 

 the Boston Society of Natural History, in whose museum it 

 still is. This seems to be the last record for the State. In 

 Connecticut it disappeared at about the same time, for Linsley 

 (1842), writing of the mammals of Connecticut a century ago, 

 had no later record of it than of one he saw some years previ- 

 ously that had been killed in the northern part of the State. 

 Panthers were occasional in the southern half of Maine during 

 the early days of settlement but were practically gone by 1815, 

 although what may have been the last one killed in the State 

 was shot about 1845 at Sebago (Norton, 1930). From time to 

 time there have been rumors of panthers in the wilder parts of 

 Maine even down to the present day, but it seems safe to say 

 that these reports deserve little credence. In southern New 

 Hampshire panthers were occasionally killed, and there are 



