24 The Carnivora. 
Hearing a flight of ducks pass overhead, but invisible for 
the thick jungle, I listened for the splash as they settled on 
the water, and was then proceeding to stalk them, when a slight 
rustling of the reeds arrested my attention, and a puma sprang 
into a small clear spot, and crouched scarcely ten yards from 
me. For a moment the reflection that I carried only a No. 12 
smooth bore, loaded with No. 6 shot, almost unnerved me; but 
I fired point blank into the beast’s face as the only means of 
averting the impending spring, and threw myself on the 
ground, in the hope of avoiding the charge. 
The shot had told with terrible effect; the puma reeled, fell, 
and struggled violently in the attempt to keep its legs, tearing 
the earth with its claws, and exhibiting the impotent rage of a 
powerful animal in its death agony. The struggle lasted for 
a minute or two, perhaps, while I could get no opportunity of 
firing the second barrel to advantage, and ended in the 
convulsive twitching of the limbs which betokens the certainty 
of approaching death. When all was still, I examined my unex- 
pected prize, and found it to be a splendid female. The 
destruction wrought by that single charge of shot was astonish- 
ing. The face was completely shattered, several pellets having 
penetrated the brain, and destroyed both eyes. No doubt she 
had gone to the river to drink, and had not heard me until I was 
so close as to render a meeting inevitable, with the result of 
which I have every reason to be well satisfied. 
The leopards or panthers of Asia and Africa, though far 
inferior in size to the tiger or jaguar, are nevertheless formid- 
able even to human life on occasion, and add to their destruc- 
tive powers by their ability to pursue their prey, such as monkeys 
—of which they are very fond—among the branches of trees. 
This habit, on the other hand, renders it easy to drive them 
to a tree with dogs, when they are killed without danger to 
the hunter. That they add considerably to the loss of life in 
India appears sufficiently clear from the official report for 1881, 
which gives the number of persons killed by leopards in that 
year as 239; while in some years they have destroyed more 
