Wild Beasts and Their Ways 89 
with a very long tail and with a coat the ground colour of which turns rather more 
towards grey than yellow, but has very black and broad markings—slightly more jaguar- 
like. The leopard of the open country has a bigger and more leonine head, proportionately, 
than his congener. of the forest. The leopard found in Sinai, in Syria, in Persia, 
Afghanistan, and China is almost a distinct variety with more ereyish-whitish fur, marked 
with larger rosettes and bigger spots. It is, in fact, a distinct link between the ordinary 
leopard and the ounce or snow leopard. 
Strangely enough the word “leopard” is really the old Latin designation of the 
cheetah (Cynalurus jwhatus). The Romans called the true leopard Pardus and Panthera, 
and the Greeks, Pardos and Panther (panther).* The cheetah was new to them, never 
possibly having inhabited Europe, at any rate since the Neolithic period. The first cheetahs 
appear to have been brought to Rome from Northern Africa,t and with their rather leonine 
aspect (due to the short mane) were believed to be hybrids between lion and panther 
(Leo-pardus). The Crusaders encountered them again as tamed animals among the 
Saracens of Syria and Hgypt, and the tradition of the Latin name (Leopardus) still 
lingered. As lke as not the Leopards of Hngland are the cheetah. The name. 
however (mn early English (2bbard), soon began to be misapplied to the panther, as the 
latter—far commoner—became better known. We regained knowledge of the cheetah 
through Western India, where it is semi-domesticated, as it was formerly by Hgyptians, 
Arabs, and Persians. Curiously enough chita or chhita (the origin of cheetah) in 
Hindustani merely means “panther,” so that the confusion in nomenclature between 
these two large spotted cats (which generically are so wide apart) remains hopelessly 
confounded. Although so much associated with India, the cheetah is really more African 
than Asiatic in its range at the present day, though it is found fossil in the Panjab 
* Both words. 
+ I have shown elsewhere in writing about Tunisia that the cheetah still lingers in the region of the Shats, just north 
of the Tunisian Sahara. It is very common in Fezzan, and was anciently found in Central Tunisia and in the Tripolitaine. 
Photograph by W. Papanaoe Regents Purk. 
LEOPARD. 
