266 SHIKAR SKETCHES. 



ling a leopard or panther, a well-authenticated 

 instance is on record of a pack of fox-hounds 

 doing so. It was narrated in the Field of Sep- 

 tember 24, 1869, and there was a spirited sketch 

 of the scene in the Illustrated London News of 

 October 9, 1869. The pack who thus distin- 

 guished themselves were the Madras hounds, 

 which during the hot weather are always sent up 

 to the cooler atmosphere of the Neilgherry Hills. 

 The pack, with one or two exceptions, had been 

 imported from England some six months previ- 

 ously, and was largely composed of drafts from 

 the Pytchley kennels, sent by Colonel Anstruther 

 Thomson, who was then master of the Pytchley 

 hounds, and in whose possession I saw the stuffed 

 head of the panther. 



On June 22, 1869, the hounds had had a run 

 after a jackal, and accounted for him by them- 

 selves, not, as our old friend Mr. Jorrocks would 

 say, ' by losin' 'im,' but by killing him, when a 

 full-grown panther jumped up out of a 'sholah,' 

 or wooded ravine, and the pack broke away after 

 him full cry. They soon came up with him, and 

 rolled him over in the open on a grassy hillside. 

 The panther, however, managed to get away, and 

 entered a small patch of cover with a stream at 

 the bottom. Into this the pack followed, arid 

 panther and hounds rolled over in a confused 



