150 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
companions or descendants would dare to approach. 
And thus many goats were unavailingly sacrificed. 
His custom was to watch the kill, and never approach 
till the last man had left ; then, secure from im- 
mediate interruption, he at once proceeded to his 
repast, and I had no doubt in my mind that he 
could count with sufficient accuracy to insure that 
there was no interruption. For him, the spoil-sport 
of the locality, a trap of devilish ingenuity was laid. 
First, his kill was placed in a “ zareeba” of thorns, 
and across the opening a gun loaded with buckshot 
was sighted; no confidence was placed in the long 
silken thread which is supposed to pull the trigger 
by the pressure of the chest of the victim, for this 
animal was too cunning to push against even so 
slight an obstacle, but a weight was arranged to 
fall at the least touch on a tight cord attached to 
the trigger. We strolled away, talking freely, and 
had not gone 200 yards, when a shot resounded 
through the forest, and, returning, we found that 
the panther lay dead close by. He had no tail or 
ears, and his neck and chest were seamed with 
scars-—a, vicious beast that might,’ as he became 
feebler, have turned into a man-eater, and have been 
even more difficult to destroy. 
It was at Charda that I saw the effect of the 
great frost of 1905, when in one night the foliage 
wilted over hundreds of square miles of forest, and 
myriads of trees were killed throughout the country. 
The cold air seemed to lie in strata varying with 
the locality. In some places the upper half of the 
tree was frost-bitten, and in others only the lower 
portion was affected by the intense cold; but in 
