NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 239 



vember, 1913, several miles north of Washington, D. C. The 

 panther records assembled for Tennessee relate mostly to 

 earlier days, with some evidence that they persisted up till 

 about 1875, or slightly after. Merriam, who traveled through 

 the Great Smoky Mountains in 1888, concluded as a result of 

 his inquiries that it was at that time unknown to the local 

 inhabitants. Nevertheless, Kellogg accepts a report of one 

 said to have been killed in 1929 in the Holston Mountains, 

 Johnson County, and another of one "seen crossing the trail 

 on Roan Mountain on September 18, 1937," without adducing 

 further evidence. C. S. Brimley (1905) records that the last 

 authentic report for North Carolina is of one killed near Rose 

 Bay, Hyde County, some years before the Civil War. Prob- 

 ably the range extended slightly farther south into the northern 

 parts of Georgia and Alabama and then merged with that of 

 the lowland Florida race. Ho well (1921) writes that in the 

 latter State (Alabama), although it is now "nearly, if not 

 quite, exterminated . . . recent reports, although rather 

 indefinite, indicate that a very few may still remain in the big 

 swamps of the southern counties." If these reports may be 

 credited, it is likely that they Vefer to the Florida form, and 

 Dr. Francis Harper regards the animal of southern Georgia as 

 the same, giving records of its presence up till at least the early 

 years of the present century. 



From the foregoing brief survey, it is clear that the eastern 

 panther, though fairly common for so large a beast of prey, 

 was exterminated from the more settled parts along the 

 Atlantic coast in the colonial days, while in the wilder and more 

 mountainous regions, as in Vermont and New Hampshire, the 

 Adirondacks, and the Alleghenies, it persisted in some numbers 

 till about the middle of the last century, after which the last 

 surviving scattered individuals were gradually shot or trapped 

 until they were exterminated, or practically so, by the last 

 years of the nineteenth century. Later reports, though in 

 some cases perhaps credible, must nevertheless be received 

 with skepticism for, as shown by Cory in his (1912) account of 

 the animal, even a trained eye and a person familiar with the 

 appearance of the animal may sometimes be deceived. The 

 testimony of those who report "tracks" requires careful sub- 

 stantiation, since few hunters or trappers in the East have 

 ever had opportunity to examine these, much less to recognize 

 the animal in the wild. 



