MISCELLA^^EO US NOTUS. 



935 



No. III.— KOTES OX PANTHERS. 

 In accordance with the wishes of some members of the Society for letters 

 from indi-^idual members recounting their personal experiences in connection 

 with beasts of the field, or rather jungle, I give you the following account of 

 what panthers, accustomed to lights and sounds connected v\-ith a tea plan- 

 ter's bungalow and the surrounding coolie lines, will do. During the rains a 

 pair of these animals invaded the compound of the Superintendent's bungalow 

 one night and kept himself and his servants practically confined to the^bun- 

 galow from 8 p. m. until midnight. A hedge of quickset thorn surrounds the 

 bimgalow and behind this they chased each other round regardless of lights 

 and shouting. At last in desperation my Supeiintendent fired his gun off in 

 the direction they appeared to be. This eventually drove them off. A fort- 

 night ago T happened to be calling up at his bungalow on business and on 

 stepping out of the verandah preparatory to proceeding to my own residence 

 I received a blow which included the whole of the left side of the face and left 

 a gash under my eye. This laid me out senseless for half an hour. No one 

 was an actual witness of the occurrence but there could have been no doubt 

 that a panther had given the blow as the pug marks and those of two cubs were 

 very distinct all round the bungalow. That my face was not torn away I put 

 down to the fact that the animal only wanted to give me a knock down blow ami 

 did not use her claws. The fact of a tiger or panther using its claws would do 

 away with the effect of a blow given by the pad when hardened. I saw a tigress 

 give such a blow to a tiger in the Calcutta Zoo. It would have certainly killed 

 a man but only staggered his majesty without dra'\\-ing blood. Both the above 

 incidents occurred on very dark nights, and I presume in the first case the 

 panthers Avere love making. In my twenty-five years' experience of Cachar 

 I have had many exjjeriences with panthers some of which I may give you 

 later. 



Cachak, 

 29th January 1021. A. G. Mc ARTHUR. 



No. IV.— PANTHER IN A TREE WITH A PIG. 

 I was out on an elephant in the Mudumalai forests (Nilgiri Wynaad) one 

 afternoon last month and about 5-30 p. m. heard a confused noise of animals 

 giving tongue. Mahout and Shikari declared tliis to be bears fighting. So the 

 elephant was huriied to the spot at its best pace. A herd of pig were found 

 to have treed a panther which lay fully extended along a horizontal branch 

 about 15 -ft. above the ground. In its grasp the panther had a small pig. At 

 about 35 yards the elephant was pulled up and I fired. The pig drojiped like a 

 stone and lay as dead for several minutes, in fact until some minutes after the 

 elephant had been walked up to it, though apparently unscathed. Then witli 

 the elephant standing beside it, it suddenly jumped up and scuttled off, much 

 to the alarm of the "elephant, who threw off the Mahout and my rifle, trum- 

 peted twice and stamped his forefeet. To return to the panther ; after 

 being struck he dropped the pig instantly, there followed a pause, very brief 

 but distinct, and then he reversed his direction on the branch and shot diago- 

 nally into the grass like a flash. Now this animal had been struck in the back 

 of tiie neck, the bullet (-405 soHd) coming out through lus left eye. Yet he per- 

 formed the difficult feat of turning to face the tree trunk from having been fully 

 stretched out in the opposite direction. After the slight i)auso referred to, 

 this ' about turn ' movement was done so extraordinarily quickly that I did 

 not follow it. Yet it must have been so for the pig dropped from the forepaws 

 which were outwards from the tree trunk, and the panther shot into the grass 

 in the opposite dnection. He lay invisible in high grass (there was only short 

 grass on the side from which I had approached), invisible to a 6' man standing 

 erect on the pad of an 8' elephant at 10 yards distance. However after a wait 



