It THE FATHER OF GAME 43 
of southern Argentina; and’ it is interesting to 
read the following from “Gold Diggings at Cape 
Horn,” by an excellent observer, John R. Spears, 
the most recent writer upon Patagonia: 
“The lonely wayfarer is not often found there 
afoot, but men have been on the desert unmounted, 
and the panthers have come to play around them 
too. But it is not as a predatory cat that they 
come. Itisas a playful kitten. Individual pan- 
thers play by themselves—old ones as well as 
young — by the hour. They will chase and paw 
and roll an upturned bush or a round rock or 
any moving thing, and lacking that will pretend 
to sneak up on an unwary game, crouching the 
while behind a bush or rock for concealment, to 
spring out at last and land on a hump of sand or 
a shadow. Then they turn round and do the 
same thing over again. When it is in this frame 
of mind, if a lone human being comes along, the 
panther is as glad to see him as a petted cat to 
see its mistress. It purrs and rolls over before 
him, and gallops from side to side, and makes no 
end of kitten-like motions, and all because of the 
exuberance of its youthful spirits. . . . The plains- 
men of all Argentina call the panther by a name 
which means ‘friend of man.’” 
The young are born as early as February in 
Central America, where a second litter may occa- 
sionally be produced, as it is stated that kittens 
have been taken in August; but in the northern 
