88 Animal Life 
have mistaken leopards bounding 
through herbage for female (and 
therefore hornless) reedbuck and so 
have missed an easy shot; both 
creatures when in first flight giving 
the same loose-jointed, shambling 
leaps. On other occasions I and 
others have pronounced a full-grown 
leopard to be a half-grown honess, 
so completely monotonous in colour 
becomes the leopard’s fur in sunlight 
and at a distance of over fifty yards. 
The cry of the leopard at 
night is a short coughing “ Augh!” 
“Aueh!” sound, apparently partly 
uttered through the nose. Whether 
it is the male alone that makes this 
noise I cannot say any more than 
IT can determine why he makes it 
at a time when he must desire to 
steal on his prey unobserved. Per- 
haps it is done like the lion’s 
roaring, to fluster and perturb timid 
creatures who in their panic may reveal their whereabouts by uneasy movements. 
When leopards are breeding they give vent to miauling sounds very like cats on the 
tiles. Noises of this description were heard one afternoon only a mile from one of 
our camps on the Mau Plateau, and an official of the Uganda Railway going to 
investigate saw the magnificent spectacle of a leopardess Circe surrounded by seven 
leopards, each eagerly soliciting her favourable notice. He fired and killed one of the 
expectant bridegrooms, whereupon the rest vanished into the adjacent forest. 
Leopard cubs when in their babyhood are rather ugly little things, with short 
pointed tails and a fur of a dusky greyish brown, suggesting but faintly the future 
spots and rosettes. In fact a leopard does not attain to a handsomely spotted skin 
till he is a year old. Like the lion he does not reach anything lke maturity (in 
the male) till the age of three years. A very curious (and seemingly new) variety— 
if not sub-species of the leopard—is found in Northern Cape Colony and perhaps in 
Basutoland. It is of large size, but the rosettes have changed into innumerable tiny 
black spots thickly scattered over the rather umber-tinted fur of the upper parts. 
The bold black stripes of the throat and the black spots on the white belly are 
retained. In fact it is a parallel case to the Servaline Cat, which differs only from 
the common Serval by the substitution of many little spots on a dusky ground for 
the large clear black spotting on yellow. It would almost seem as though (but for the 
hindrance of man and his attempts at exterminating) a new species of leopard on 
rather leonine lines was being developed under our eyes in South Africa. With this 
exception the leopards of all Africa, and of India, Ceylon and Malaysia, are absolutely 
indistinguishable in appearance, size, and markings, though all these regions offer two 
distinct and similar types, according as the leopard in question inhabits the open or the 
forest country. 
The leopard of the grasslands is a large beast, occasionally approaching a small 
lioness in size, with short yellow fur marked very clearly with distinct but not large 
rosettes. The forest-dwelling leopard of Africa and Southern Asia is slightly smaller, 
NEN 
Photograph by W. PB. Dando, F.Z.S., Regents Park. 
CHEETAHS. 
