<348 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL lUST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXI. 



•difference between the average size of Mr. Hicks' two species I should find 

 it extremely difficult to place these Gujarat animals, not having in those 

 days ever thought of counting the caudal vertebrre. 



The author is very severe on the sportsman who says he has killed a 

 panther when he has shot an animal of the smaller type, Avhich is rather 

 unkind if one considers that modern scientists all tell the sportsman that 

 the small beast is a panther. 



To the ordinary use of the word "leopard '' Mr. Hicks stronglj' objects. 

 And of course he is perfectly right in pointing out that the original 

 leopardus was undoubtedly Felis jubata (Cynmlurus jubatus). But when he 

 remarks that " pardus'''' means '' spotted," not " rosetted," implying that 

 the animal known to the ancients as ^^ pavdus " Avas not the panther, I think, 

 he is wrong ; the panther is not the less spotted because his spots are 

 arranged in rosettes. But in any case the ordinary use of the word leopard 

 has existed for centuries, and is too general for there to be any hope of 

 correcting the error now ; the name panther indeed in its true application 

 is hardly known out of India. Under the circumstances one cannot agree 

 with the author when he stigmatizes the man who calls the panther a 

 ■" leopard " as ignorant and immoral ! More especially seeing that in spite 

 of his zeal for correct nomenclature he invariably calls the gaur what it is 

 not — a bison. The latter misnomer, if sanctioned by practice, is yet no 

 more excusable than in the case of the leopard. While his spelling of 

 •*' cheetle " for " chital" if original, is not to be admired. 



However, these are trivial blemishes in what is one of the most remark- 

 able books on Indian big game that has been written. Certainly no 

 writer of whom I am aware has displayed a knowledge equal to this 

 author's of the habits of the tiger, and his chapters on the theory and 

 practice of beating for tigers deserve the sportsman's careful study. 

 But I have no intention here of trying to review Mr. Hicks' book and have 

 already written more than I meant to do. I will only add that the author 

 records the shooting of an undoubted hybrid between tiger and panther of 

 which he says " its head and tail were purely those of a panther, but with 

 a body, shoulders and neck-ruff unmistakably of a tiger, the black stripes 

 being broad and long though somewhat blurred and breaking oft' here and 

 there into a few blurred rosettes, the stripes of the tiger being most predo- 

 minant on the body." The animal was an old male and measured a little 

 over 8 feet in length. This unique trophy unfortunately disappeared 

 during the confusion, and subsequent illness of the author, that followed 

 on a severe mauling which he sustained. Is there any other record of such 

 a hybrid at any rate in the wild state .^ 



A.^H. MOSSE, Capt., i. a. 

 DwARKA, September 1911, 



