II THE FATHER OF GAME 39 
of intelligence quite different from the flat-headed, 
brutish, ferocity of many feline countenances. 
Yet, when the ears are laid flat back, the eyes 
half closed, the lips withdrawn in a snarl, and the 
animal crouched, with muscles tense and the corn- 
colored claws half-protruded, in readiness for a 
spring, its aspect is sufficiently terrifying. 
This animal, nevertheless, is probably the most 
cowardly and least dangerous of all the larger car- 
nivores. The South Americans dread it much less 
than the jaguar, and the Indians of our continent 
would far rather meet it than a bear. The in- 
stances are few where it has seriously resisted men 
when it could get away, and then it was almost in- 
variably in defence of its young; and still fewer 
are the instances where it has made an unpro- 
voked attack. One has often, it is true, ap- 
proached a lone wood-chopper, or dogged the trail 
of a hunter or traveller through the wilderness, or 
prowled about some camp-fire or remote frontier 
cabin; but this behavior was evidently dictated in 
some cases by extreme hunger, but more often by 
mere curiosity and desire for company, and has 
been rarely followed by a harmful attack, though 
credible cases of its springing upon children have 
been recorded. 
To this timidity is largely due the easy and early 
extinction of the beast in the eastern half of the 
Union, where, had it possessed the courage and 
power of resistance shown by the Old World leop- 
