16 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 



Pennsylvania lion, but this in turn has become its most 

 dignified cognomen. It is interesting to note that Peter 

 Pentz, the famous Indian fighter, killed a mancd male 

 panther near McElhattan Run, Clinton County, in 

 1798. The Indians told the Dutch settlers on Man- 

 hattan Island that the hides of panthers they brought 

 there to sell were from females, that the males had 

 manes and were difficult to capture. Perhaps the 

 earliest form of the panther possessed maned males. 

 They may be a modification of the prehistoric lions 

 which Prof. Leidy called felis atrox, and which 

 ranged parts of the continent. The Indians may -have 

 repeated an old tradition, and not something made out 

 of the whole cloth. Panthers lived in shallow caves 

 along the steep slopes of the rockier of the Pennsylva- 

 nia mountains. Peter Pentz, it is said, crawled into a 

 deep cavern to kill the maned panther and its mate. 

 George Shover blocked up a panther in a cave on 

 Little Miller Run, Lycoming County, in 1865, built a 

 fire and suffocated the beast. There have been a few 

 Pennsylvanians who called the Pennsylvania lion the 

 cougar, and a still smaller number who alluded to it 

 as the puma. There has been a wide range to the 

 scientific nomenclature. S. N. Rhoads, the Phila- 

 delphia naturalist, who knows more about the panther 

 than any other man in the State, gives preference to 

 felis congjiar. This is undoubtedly superior to fcIis 

 concolor, which conveys very little. Others have re- 

 ferred to it as the American Lion, Brown Tiger and 

 Catamount. The last title refers more properly to the 



