ORDER CARNASSIER. 463 



characters of the Leopard are, " Felis, cauda" mediocri, 

 corpore fulvo, maculis subcoadunatis nigris." " With a 

 moderate tail, a fulvous body covered with subcontiguous 

 black spots." Dr. Shaw observes : " In the twelfth edition 

 of the Systema Naturae, the Panther and Leopard seem to 

 be confounded by Linnaeus himself, who appears to have 

 considered them as the same species, under the name of 

 Pardus." And if we consider the description given to the 

 Panther to be irrelevant and factitious, it follows, that 

 Linnaeus has only described one species of the large Spotted 

 Cats found in Asia and Africa, which must include the 

 Variae, and Pardi, and Leopardi, of the Romans. 



Buffon, the brilliancy of whose work has blinded man- 

 kind to his imperfections, imbibed an idea which he never 

 seems to have lost sight of, that the American animals were 

 degenerate, and less in size than the species of the old 

 world belonging to the same order : hence, probably, he 

 was led into a misunderstanding, or too willingly confirmed 

 in error on this subject. He has mistaken the Jaguar, 

 which he describes from an Ocelot ; and refers the former 

 animal, because, probably, it was a large species to the 

 Panther of the ancients, transposing his figures accord- 

 ingly. The furriers and exhibiters of wild beasts have 

 imbibed this error ; and the Jaguar of America has alto- 

 gether usurped the name of Panther from the species of the 

 Old World, to which it was originally applied. 



Pennant's description of the Panther so nearly accords 

 with the Jaguar of America, both in person and disposition, 

 that there scarcely seems a doubt of this animal's being the 

 type whence his description was taken. 



Dr. Shaw states, that the Leopard is best distinguished 

 from the Panther by its paler yellow colour, and that a true 

 distinctive mark between them is by no means easy to com- 

 municate, either by description, or even by figure; but he 

 adds, the Leopard is considerably the smaller of the two. 



