SOUNDS MADE BY THE PANTHER. 197 



dressed and ordered dinner on return from one of our 

 customary evening rambles we walked up and down the 

 front verandah, while servants moved about the well-lighted 

 rooms of the house, laying the table and bringing in plates 

 and dishes. There was no moon, and therefore except where 

 the lamps threw streaks of light through the open doors upon 

 the ground outside, objects in the gloornand shadow could not 

 be easily distinguished. As we paced the verandah we were 

 startled by a heavy thump on its brick floor, and by a shrill 

 yelp of fear and surprise from a pointer dog, which had been 

 watching with keen interest the bringing in of our dinner 

 from one end, and now ran up to us bristles erect and tail 

 between his legs. Turning sharply round we descried, for 

 half a second, the retreating form of a panther, which had 

 leapt into the verandah, and having failed to seize " Blucher," 

 now disappeared in the gloom of night like a ghost. In the 

 same bungalow, and under almost the same circumstances, a 

 large spaniel belonging to my successor O. was seized and 

 carried off two years afterwards, possibly by the same 

 animal, whose small and round footprints proved him to be 

 a tree panther ; but we never had the gratification of renew- 

 ing our acquaintance with him, as we greatly desired. 



Both varieties are in the habit of uttering a succession 

 of coughing grunts or grunting coughs, not unlike the sound 

 made by the working of a rough saw through hard and 

 coarse-grained wood. This sound sufficiently resembles saw- 

 ing to cause men lying within huts or tents to turn in their 

 beds on hearing it, and to mutter " There's the sawyer 

 again." It is not the ordinary voice of the animal, which is 

 a deep grunt, nor the guttural rolling growl with which it 

 charges, but a peculiar sound made when, regardless of con- 

 cealment, the panther desires to create a panic among cattle, 

 and to cause them to break out of their shed or pen, which he 

 is unable to enter, or fears to do so, dreading a trap. 



A notable instance of the impudence of the tree panther, 

 and of the use made of this peculiar sawing noise, came 

 under my own observation some years ago at Shillong, on the 



