62 WILD ANIMALS. 



among the hardest animals to kill, and their power of springing 

 from a height upon any passing object makes them a most for- 

 midable class of wild animal. A well-authenticated story is told 

 of a leopard taking a sportsman clean out of a high perch he had 

 made upon a tree, and killing him ; for although they prey on the 

 smaller deer, goats, antelopes, birds, with a special predilection 

 for monkeys and dogs, yet they readily become " man-eaters," 

 mostly attacking, howeyer, women and children ; in this respect, 

 again, being hardly second to the tiger in the havoc they can 

 create, and the terror they inspire. In some districts of India 

 panthers are reported to be more destructive to human life than 

 tigers or bears, for their climbing powers enable them to attack 

 and carry off the poor people who from the machavs or tree- 

 perches watch the grain. Amongst the smaller animals they are 

 also frequently more destructive, for they appear to kill victim 

 after victim merely to gratify their sanguinary and ferocious 

 taste, and apparently not from any inspiration of hunger. 



Captain Torsyth writes,^ " When a panther takes to man-eating 

 he is a far more terrible savage than a tiger. In 1858 a man- 

 killing panther devastated the northern part of the Seoni district, 

 killing (incredible as it may seem), nearly a hundred persons before 

 he was shot by a shikari. He never ate the bodies, but merely 

 lapped the blood from the throat ; and his plan was either to steal 

 into a house at night, and strangle some sleeper on his bed, stifling 

 all outcry with his deadly grip, or to climb into the high plat- 

 forms from which watchers guard their fields from deer, and drag 

 out his victim froru there. He was not to be baulked of his 

 prey ; and when driven ofi" from one end of a village, would hurry, 

 round to the opposite side and secure another in the confusion ; 

 a few moments completed his deadly work; and such was the 

 devilish cunning he joined to this extraordinary boldness, that 

 all attempts to find and shoot him were for many months unsuc- 

 cessful. European sportsmen who went out, after hunting him in 

 vain all day, would find his tracks close to the door of their tent 

 in the morning." 



Their night-cry is very similar to that of the tiger, but less 

 ' "The HigHands of Central India," 1871. 



