22 THE BIOLOGICAL REVIEW. 



gotten, living about four miles from them, was terribly 

 frightened a few days before, by a large wild animal. He had 

 been to Brockville on some business, and on his return journey 

 he stopped at this house, rested, had supper and also hay and 

 oats for his horse. He started for home about ten o'clock in 

 the evening ; it was a beautiful, bright moonlight night ; he was 

 perfectly sober, as he did not take any intoxicating drink. He 

 was riding along at a gentle trot when, nearing a bridge across 

 a stream, in a deep hollow, his horse gave a loud snort, suddenly 

 stopped, reared up, swerved around, almost throwing him off. 

 On looking in the direction indicated by the actions of his horse, 

 he saw a large yellow animal, with a long tail, crouching by the 

 side of the road, not many yards away. On his making a 

 threatening gesture towards it, and giving a loud yell, the 

 animal got up, looked at him for a moment, and then bounded 

 into the woods. The horse was so frightened that he became 

 unmanageable, and galloped back to the house from which they 

 had started, when it was plain both man and horse were both 

 very much frightened. This occurred in the Township of Ops. 



I called to see this farmer soon after he had this adventure, 

 and he gave me a very full account of it, many particulars of 

 which I have omitted. 



I offered an old hunter ten dollars if he could get the animal 

 for me. He found the track several times, but it was always 

 lost in the big swamp, known as Pigeon Creek Swamp, a broad 

 and dismal swamp running through several townships. 



I called at a farm house on the Ops side of the swamp, and 

 the farmer asked me if I had heard anything while coming 

 through it, which I had not. He said, " Last night something 

 took a hog from my very door. Yon swamp is a terrible place ; 

 what terrible screams I hear down there almost every night ! " 



(1853). 



I remember reading in the Toronto Globe, about four years 

 ago, an account of the killing of a large animal of the cat kind — 

 I think in the Township of Malahide — which measured over six 

 feet in length. It was an animal of a kind never before seen up 

 there. It could not have been a lynx, for they were common 

 there, and besides I never knew of one over four feet in length. 



