544 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII. 



making quite certain he was dead, I sent a man down noting at the time that 

 this panther had apparently a nice taste in high kills. On hauling him up 

 by means of a puggari we found he had the distinct punctures of big teeth 

 in his throat and in addition the lower part of the throat was torn out and 

 eaten and he was also disembowelled — from his state he had evidently been 

 killed early the previous night. He was a small adult male and would measure 

 rather over 6 feet. 



On looking about on the top of the boulders we found the jaw bones and 

 stomach of a goat. Below there was a narrow passage between the rock 

 leading to where the dead panther was found and in this was the distinct 

 track of a panther entering and leaving. 



What had evidently happened was that the dead panther had been surprised 

 on his kill and in a dying state had fallen down between the rocks. His 

 murderer having finished off; the goat got down to his body and had a good 

 square feed off him. 



There was a low rocky ridge about 300 yards off across a little rice cultivat- 

 ed valley in which I thought the slayer might be lying, so about 5-30 p.m. I 

 got into a small tree commanding the route any animal coming back to the 

 big rocks must take. 



I further picketed a kid close to me. About 6 p.m. I thought some animal 

 was on the move from the restlessness of some crows in the rocky ridge and 

 I suddenly caught sight of a panther, who had evidently just left some rocks 

 at the foot of the ridge, about 250 yards off, coming straight towards me 

 across a dry rice field. He was rather below the slight rise on which my 

 kid was and I could not see it nor had the latter ever uttered a sound. I let 

 him come quietly on just as I expected, and when he topped the little rise 

 about 30 yards from me he suddenly spotted the kid and was stalking slowly 

 up when I dropped him about 3 yards from it, which then saw him for the first 

 time. He was a short but very thick set male panther, measuring 6'-6" be- 

 tween uprights — he we>.s not scarred or marked but he had one of the big 

 teeth in his lower jaw broken off quite short recently. I am certain he was 

 returning to his kill, the dead panther, and when shot he was about 15 yards 

 in a straight line from where it lay. My old shikari said he had known no 

 case of this sort with panthers previously. 



For my second case, a tiger, I will quote from a letter written to me from 

 a shooting camp in the Bandara District, C. P., in May 1904, which I had just 

 left. The first part of the letter describes a successful tiger beat and shoot and 

 I will quote from there : " There lay the most magnificent beast — the biggest 

 and heaviest G. J. has ever seen, and he has seen a good few, — heavy, hard and 

 fit as he could be and with hardly a sound tooth in his head, all the big 

 teeth being broken off quite short. It took some twelve men to move him 

 out and when they did I got two photos of him and was just taking a 

 third when a most fearful din rose from down below where the rest of the 

 beaters were drinking ; ' Sher — Sher ata ', and yells and shouts. There vms a 



