MISCELLANEOUS NOTES, 407 



is uniformly olive without any symmetrical undulating black lines, except a rather 

 faint oval mark on each of the parietals. From the occiput two narrow vertebral 

 black lines run a short distance down the neck. The anterior portion of the 

 neck is, like the head, uniform olive, but all the scales of the back and sides (not 

 only on the vertebral line), and those of the upper side of the tail down to the tip, 

 have broad black margins ; beneath, as in the type, uniform white throughout. 

 For a Psammophis the snake is rather a thick-set animal, in appearance very much 

 like a Tropidonotus, and as it was shot from the top of a tree, its habits seem to 

 be more arboreal than those of its congeners. 



F. DEECKMANN. 

 9th July, 1892. 



No. VI.— A PANTHER EATING A PANTHER. 



With reference to Mr. Barton's note on the above subject in Journal No. 2, 

 Vol. VI., the following may be of interest to some of our members : — 



In 1884 I was staying with D., a forest oflBcer, in the Panch Mahals, near to 

 Sodhra. Whilst we were sitting out one evening on the side of a hill where we 

 had been for a walk, a panther came along and stood within 10 yards of us. 

 D. had a rifle with him, but on my whispering to him that there was a panther close 

 by him, he turned round so quickly that the panther saw him and disappeared. 

 We decided to tie up a couple of goats, but nothing came that night except a 

 hyaena, which D. shot. The next evening, however, D. wounded a panther, but 

 it was too late to follow it up. During the night we heard one calling for its 

 mate all over the hill, and next morning, whilst searching for tracks, our atten- 

 tion was called by one of the men to something in the fork of a large tree close 

 by, and on nearer inspection this turned out to bethebodyof the wounded panther, 

 whose hind-quarters were half eaten, and the skin, of course, worried. The 

 ' gallant husband ' who had performed this act of cannibalism had left the marks 

 of his claws on the tree, where some five feet above the ground he had sprung 

 up on to the trunk. 



Most sportsmen will remember having in the course of their shooting expedi- 

 tions come across trees, which, from the marks of blood, frc, on some large fork 

 were evidently regular resorts to which the resident panther of the neighbourhoocl 

 was in the habit of taking its prey for consumption, and this tree was a case 

 in point. 



H. D. OLIVIER, Majoj. 

 Ahmedabad Districts, April, 1892. 



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