PANTHERS, AND OUR OTHER CATS. 419 
with the gentle demeanor of the family. The wife and chil- 
dren, I more than once thought, seemed to look upon me as 
a strange sort of person, going about, as I told them I was, 
in search of birds and plants; and were I here to relate the 
many questions which they put to me in return for those 
which I addressed to them, the catalogue would occupy 
several pages. The husband, a native of Connecticut, had 
heard of the existence of such men as myself, both in our 
own country and abroad, and seemed greatly pleased to have 
me under his roof. , Supper over, I asked my kind host what 
had induced him to remove to this wild and solitary spot. 
“The people are too numerous now to thrive in New Eng- 
land,” was his answer. I thought of the state of some parts 
of Europe, and calculating the denseness of their population 
compared with that of New England, exclaimed to myself, 
“How much more difficult must it be for men to thrive in 
those populous countries!” The conversation then changed, 
and the squatter, his sons and myself, spoke of hunting and 
fishing, until at length tired, we laid ourselves down on 
pallets of bear skins, and reposed in peace on the floor of 
the only apartment of which the hut consisted. 
Day dawned, and the squatter’s call to his hogs, which, 
being almost in a wild state, were suffered to seek the greater 
portion of.their food in the woods, awakened me. Being 
ready dressed, I was not long in joining him. The hogs and 
their young came grunting at the well known call of their 
owner, who threw them a few ears of corn, and counted them, 
but told me that for some weeks their number had been 
greatly diminished by the ravages committed upon them by 
a large Panther, by which name the cougar is designated 
in America, and that the ravenous animal did not content 
himself with the flesh of his pigs, but now and then carried 
off one of his calves, notwithstanding the many attempts he 
had made to shoot it, The Painter, as he sometimes called 
it, had on several occasions robbed him of a dead deer; ané 
