NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 241 



secured several through a hunter who obtained them in the 

 wilderness back of Sebastian and in his paper on Florida mam- 

 mals writes (1898) that though the exact range could not then 

 be given, "the puma is extinct in all the region directly north- 

 east of Florida, and I believe in northern Florida as well." 

 At the present time there are still a number of pumas in the 

 Everglades, where they live largely on deer, but probably they 

 have been extirpated from most other parts of the State. 



Dr. Francis Harper (1927) has gathered a mass of notes as 

 to the presence of the puma in the region of the Okefenokee 

 Swamp in southern Georgia and refers the animal to this form. 

 Here he says "it is now very nearly if not entirely extinct. Yet 

 it lingered well into the present century, and it is perhaps not 

 beyond the bounds of possibility that some solitary survivor 

 may yet be taken. " At all events, he records one killed about 

 1883 and one seen alive about 1903. Older residents of the 

 region supplied other instances of animals killed about 1885. 

 Most of the later reports are of tracks seen or other signs, 

 with a final record of one said to have been killed about 1925 

 on the southern edge of the Swamp. The residents in that 

 region universally speak of it*as the "Tiger." Hunting is 

 usually done in Florida with dogs. When started, the puma 

 usually runs a short distance and then takes to a tree. The 

 dogs keep it at bay until the hunters come up and shoot it. 



While probably now quite gone from northern Florida and 

 Georgia, this race doubtless still occurs in parts of southern 

 Alabama and the canebrakes of Louisiana. Writing of the 

 former State, Howell (1921) speaks of it as now "nearly, if not 

 quite, exterminated"; recent reports, however, "although 

 rather indefinite, indicate that a very few may still remain in 

 the big swamps of the southern counties. " Tracks were seen 

 near Scale about 1912 by an old trapper, and another was re- 

 ported as actually seen about 1905 in Baldwin County, but 

 these are rather questionable bits of evidence. In 1911 Hoi- 

 lister wrote that pumas "are still fairly common in the wilder 

 parts of the cane brake region of eastern Louisiana," and he 

 himself while hunting in the Bear Lake Cane in February, 

 1904, several times heard panthers "crying." 



Panthers formerly were found in somewhat similar country 

 in Arkansas, and True (1889) reports a few killed or seen up to 

 the late eighties, but it is not certain that they were of this race. 



