406 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



in eluding pursuit, which would do credit to Reynard himself. 

 One of them is, that he makes for some half dried swamp 

 or pond, and runs into the most sticky clay, seeming to be 

 aware that the stockings with which his legs would be 

 defended when he came out, would prevent the scent being 

 deposited from his feet, and dull the trail ! A shrewd 

 conjecture that ! but not, as I think, particularly plausible, 

 for in a few bounds the mire would be rubbed off the soles of 

 his feet, from which alone the scent is emitted, and leave him 

 badly off as ever. I have described the cunning strategy of 

 this creature, in the Night Hunt of an earlier chapter. 



But I know hundreds of well authenticated instances in 

 which the cougar or panther attacked the early hunters 

 springing upon them as readily from ambush, as they would 

 have done upon a deer. 



I should not feel authorized to mention at second-hand 

 any incident of the many I could command, as entitled to 

 stand among the facts of natural history, but that in my 

 own personal experience I have so frequently witnessed such, 

 that I am compelled to allow some of these a weight propor- 

 tioned to their authority. 



In an excursion towards the Rocky Mountains, I have 

 met all our most formidable animals under the most varied 

 circumstances of sudden collision. On this expedition we 

 saw several skins and two specimens in the flesh of the puma, 

 which is yet unrecognized by any American Naturalist. It 

 is evidently a transitional genus, partaking of the charac- 

 ters of both the lion and the cougar. It has clearly the 

 rudimental mane and tufted tail, which characterizes the 

 former, while its habits approximate those of the latter. 



I once, while hunting around a camp on one of the head 

 streams of the Red River, encountered a puma, in a manner 

 much resembling the instance of the wild cat given above. 

 I had gone out in the early morning to hunt, with a comrade, 

 and we were carelessly walking through the thick woods in 



