1884. ] Zoilogy. 1163 
frequently come out of their lairs in the middle of the day and 
ie upon the rocks near by to bask and drowse in the warm sun, 
and as the ranges there are generally very sparsely timbered, they 
are occasionally discovered by hunters, when the chances of get- 
ting within shot are better than under almost any other circum- 
stances. But for all that, they are animals that are seldom shot, 
no matter how abundant they may be, and their disappearing so 
rapidly before the march of civilization is a mystery that I can 
only solve by the conclusion that being such a large and entirely 
carnivorous animal, they are immediately affected by the least 
thinning out of the large game, and are driven by hunger to seek 
places where the rifle has not begun its deadly work, unless, as 
they seem to have done on the McCloud river, they turn their 
attention to the stock of the settler. 
Many of them are poisoned by the sheep and cattle men of 
the southern counties, when their visits to the flocks and herds 
become too frequent. I have often seen their hides nailed to the 
walls of the lonely cabins of the stockmen there, and, upon in- 
quiry, have found that they were poisoned in at least three cases 
out of four. ` 
With a single incident to illustrate the idea that it is the hunter 
and not the dog the panther fears, I will close this already lengthy 
article. In the summer of 1868 I was in Port Gamble, on Puget 
sound, A trail leading to Port Madison, eight or ten miles dis- 
Hepes to take the dog without stopping in a flying leap across 
trail—Forked Deer, in Forest and Stream. 
y WO0LOGICAL Notes. —Fishes—In Switzerland, according ein 
- Fatio, the minnow reaches an altitude of 2400 meters, an ee 
miller’s thumb one of 2200 meters. The perch stops a 
‘ers, and no others pass above 800 meters, although the carp, 
