350 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
which panthers attacked human beings unprovoked. In the 
first instance (p. 413) the ferocious animal was defeated and 
driven off by an heroic boy of twelve armed with an empty 
brandy-bottle. In the second case a blue-jacket who had 
deserted from Esquimault and ‘found his way through the 
woods until he rested under the domain of the starry flag,’ killed 
the panther which attacked him there by a ‘ gladiatorial 
thrust’ with a spade (p. 415). The third and fourth of Mr. 
Perry’s pugnacious panthers behaved somewhat differently— 
one followed a gentleman, the other followed a lady, and in 
both cases showed the human beings somewhat marked 
attentions, licking their hands, gazing ‘ intently ’ into their eyes, 
and tearing off most of their clothes, but nothing more. The 
fifth panther was caned by a gentleman from Snohomish, and 
the sixth was stared out of countenance and put to flight by 
someone from Brownsville, whom the panther had knocked 
off his horse ; but it was reserved for another hero from Snoho- 
mish to perform the marvellous feat of catching a panther on 
the wing (‘as it was passing in the air’) with ‘ his left arm round 
its body just behind the forelegs.’ Of course, having got his 
grip, the gentleman from Snohomish thumped the head of that 
poor panther with his gun-barrels till it died. In this Homeric 
struggle the victor lost nothing but the tail of his night-shirt. 
Now, no doubt all these stories are quite true, and they — 
undoubtedly prove great courage in someone, but not, it seems, 
in the panther ; so that in spite of Mr. Perry I am obliged to 
accept the general opinion upon this subject as the correct one, 
backed as it is by a statement just made to me by Mr. John 
Fannin, the curator of the British Columbian Museum—an 
accepted authority in the American press upon such matters, 
and an ‘old timer’ who has had many opportunities of observing 
this beast—-that he had never come across a well-authenticated 
story of a panther showing fight to (much less attacking) a man. _ 
From Mr. Fannin I obtained the measurements of the largest — 
panthers out of the twenty-five or so which have been sent to — 
him in late years to be skinned. The longest of these was a — 
