THE CAUCASUS 43 



on the southern slope of the Caucasus. Now and again, as 

 you come home late with your hounds, you may be lucky 

 enough to tree one, but you don't see them often. The tenth 

 time the barse may really be what he is supposed to be, a 

 leopard, but whether this leopard is Felis pardus or Felts pan- 

 thera^ I don't know. 



Professor Radde mentions both in his list of Caucasian 

 mammals. All the skins of barse which I have ever seen were 

 similar to the leopard skins of India and Persia, on the borders 

 of which country, near Lenkoran, the Caucasian barse is most 

 common. 



In spite of the stories told in his honour, I am inclined to 

 think the Caucasian leopard as great a cur as the panther of 

 the States, which he resembles a good deal in his habits. My 

 own experience of the beast is, however, limited. In a dis- 

 trict which I used to hunt a certain barse had his regular beat, 

 appearing even to have a particular day of each week allotted 

 to each little district in his domains. One moonlight night I 

 was obliged to sleep by myself in a ruined chateau, once the 

 property of General Williameenof, standing where the shore 

 and the forest met. The old Caucasian fighter had made no 

 use of the land given him by a grateful government, so the 

 roof had come off the chateau, the trees had climbed in through 

 the empty frames of the great low windows, and I flushed a 

 woodcock in the nettles which grew on the hearth. 



At midnight I woke, the moonbeams and the shadows of 

 the boughs making quaint traceries on floor and ceiling, whilst 

 underneath the window, a barse was expressing his earnest 

 desire to taste the flesh of an Englishman, in cries in which 

 a baby's wail and a wolfs howl were about equally represented. 



The brush was tco thick for me to be able to get a shot 

 at my visitor that night (though I got a shot on a subsequent 

 occasion), and though I wandered about among the trees 

 looking for him, and went to sleep again lulled by his serenade, 

 he never dared to attack me. Hence I fancy that the Cauca- 

 sian bogey is as harmless as other bogeys. 



