PANTHERS, AND OUR OTHER CATS. 419 



with the gentle demeanor of the family. The wife and chil- 

 dren, I more than once thought, seemed to look upon me as 

 a strange sort of person, going about, as I told them I was, 

 in search of birds and plants ; and were I here to relate the 

 many questions which they put to me in return for those 

 which I addressed to them, the catalogue would occupy 

 several pages. The husband, a native of Connecticut, had 

 heard of the existence of such men as myself, both in our 

 own country and abroad, and seemed greatly pleased to have 

 me under his roof. Supper over, I asked my kind host what 

 had induced him to remove to this wild and solitary spot. 

 " The people are too numerous now to thrive in New Eng- 

 land," was his answer. I thought of the state of some parts 

 of Europe, and calculating the denseness of their population 

 compared with that of New England, exclaimed to myself, 

 *' How much more difficult must it be for men to thrive in 

 those populous countries !" The conversation then changed, 

 and the squatter, his sons and myself, spoke of hunting and 

 fishing, until at length tired, we laid ourselves down on 

 pallets of bear skins, and reposed in peace on the floor of 

 the only apartment of which the hut consisted. 



Day dawned, and the squatter's call to his hogs, which, 

 being almost in a wild state, were suffered to seek the greater 

 portion of their food in the woods, awakened me. Being 

 ready dressed, I was not long in joining him. The hogs and 

 their young came grunting at the well known call of their 

 owner, who threw them a few ears of corn, and counted them, 

 but told me that for some weeks their number had been 

 greatly diminished by the ravages committed upon them by 

 a large Panther, by which name the cougar is designated 

 in America, and that the ravenous animal did not content 

 himself with the flesh of his pigs, but now and then carried 

 off one of his calves, notwithstanding the many attempts he 

 had made to shoot it. The Painter, as he sometimes called 

 it, had on several occasions robbed him of a dead deer ; and 



