THE PANTHER OUTWITTED. 351 



up a convenient position over the last victim, in expectation of the 

 panther's return to his mutton. I procured a kid, whose bleating panthers 

 always find difficulty in resisting, and tied it up in another part of the 

 jungle. I watched from behind a bush near, seated on the ground, and 

 had hardly settled myself comfortably when the sharp chirruping of a 

 squirrel in the cover w^arned me that the panther was moving. In another 

 moment the kid's cries were stifled in its grasp, but a right and left 

 from me sent it off, badly wounded, before it had time to do the kid any 

 injury, No elephants being available, we waited for half an hour before 

 following it up on foot. After creeping along its bloody tracks for about two 

 hundred yards, I observed it raise its head from a patch of rushes ahead, 

 glance at us, and crouch again. We had picked up a piece of bone two 

 inches long on its trail, and knew by this that one of its legs was broken. 

 We now slipped the dogs who quickly brought the crippled enemy to bay, 

 and I shot it. 



No wonder Eosie had escaped. The panther w^as an old female ; her 

 fangs were worn down to mere stumps, and were almost useless ; and she 

 was emaciated and weak from hunoer. She measured 6 feet 3i inches in 

 length, and 2 feet 2 inches high at the shoulder. Fleshy protuberances, the 

 size of pigeons' eggs, had grown under her tongue and on the insides of her 

 mouth, and must have interfered with her feeding. Surely the last days of 

 the large carnivora must be some expiation of all their past evil deeds, when, 

 unable to catch deer, pig, &c., they die by inches, or are prompted to deeds 

 of daring with regard to domestic animals which sooner or later bring them 

 to grief. 



