86 SrOKTIXG ADVENTURES 



even a wolf passes by, it jumps on its back, and fastening 1 its 

 claws in the sides of the poor captive, cuts open the neck or 

 throat in a few seconds. Its strength mny be inferred from 

 the fact that it can drag- a deer, weighing perhaps one hundred 

 and fifty pounds, a long- distance, and can run imite rapidly 

 with a large dog in its mouth. It has been known to kill a 

 sheep, and without doing anything more to it than to drink 

 its blood, bound away with the carcass at such a rate of speed 

 that a man on foot found a difficulty in overtaking it. 

 Should it commit depredations on a farmyard, the farmer 

 generally starts in its pursuit with dogs and guns, or spreads 

 strychnine over a piece of meat and places it in a spot where 

 it will prove most effective. Numbers are destroyed annually 

 by this means in the AVest, and, as a resiilt, they are becoming 

 scarcer in certain sections. When pursued, or startled on the 

 ground, the cougar bounds for the densest thicket, or scrambles 

 np the first convenient tree and conceals itself amid the 

 branches. Extending itself on a bough, it is sometimes diffi- 

 cult to find, if it remains quiet, but it has a habit of swinging 

 its tail from side to side, and of purring loudly, if enemies 

 approach its retreat, and these cause it to be detected when it 

 otherwise would not. 



Its courage is sufficiently great to induce it to face any foe, 

 from bear to man, in a case of emergency. I heard an old 

 hunter say that he once saw a fight between a black bear and 

 a cougar, and that the latter killed its adversary in less than 

 twenty minutes, by leaping- on its neck and cutting the spinal 

 cord with its lance-like teeth. Bruin did not die, however, 

 without a severe struggle, and inflicting such injuries on the 

 other that it would undoubtedly have died of its wounds had 

 the hunter not shot it as it was crawling into the shrubbery. 

 On examining- it he found that one of its hind legs was broken, 

 and the flesh torn off by a sweeping blow of the bear's paw, 

 and that it also had a severe wound in the neck. The cougar 

 was evidently the aggressor in this case, and was incited to 

 the combat either by hunger or a desire to defend its voiing, 

 as he found that it was a large female, whose teats were full uf 

 milk. 



