THE CHEETAH, OR HUNTING LEOPARD. 101 



guardians, but the loss of freedom, the want of exercise, and the 

 brutal treatment they appeared to have received during their short 

 confinement, had made them so savage that they attacked one of 

 the men on his entering their den and broke his arm, and they 

 were never again the docile animals they had previously been. 

 They were sent soon after this to the Tower menagerie. 



The Duke tried the experiment of hunting with one of 

 them, but it ended in a fiasco, for having turned a stag loose in a 

 large inclosure in the park, made with strong netting about fifteen 

 feet high, the cheetah was introduced and unheeded by his Indian 

 attendants. The stag turned at bay, and lowering his horns to 

 charge, the cheetah bounded over the netting in among the 

 terrified crowd of spectators, who fled ia all directions; but 

 the animal, catching sight of some fallow deer in the distance, 

 pursued one of them and killed it. The experiment was not 

 repeated, and thus cheetah-hunting in England probably began 

 and ended. 



The Zoological Society have been without a specimen of the 

 cheetah for some time, but have just received one. It was re- 

 ported that a snow leopard (Felis undo), which is an extremely 

 rare animal, had been captured in the valley of the Heri-Rud in 

 November, 1884, by Nawab Mahomed Hassan Ali Khan, of the 

 Afghan Boundary Commission, and would be sent at once to 

 England. On the animal's arrival, it turned out to be a fine 

 specimen of the cheetah, nevertheless it was extremely dis- 

 appointing. 



