THE PUMA. 



127 



puma's foot, with the small peculiarity that 

 distinguishes it from the panther's, and already- 

 mentioned, viz., the throwing behind a little 

 dirt or sand after the print of the ball of the 

 foot, which the panther does not do, but 

 leaves a clean trail. 



I believe that the African lion possesses 

 the same peculiarity of tracking the human 

 footstep, though perhaps without any imme- 

 diate purpose of attacking the man, and I 

 have also been told that a careful observer 

 will find the same dust thrown back in the 

 trail as the puma one. 



It is impossible to obviate the use of the 

 personal pronoun on all occasions, however 

 desirable, and more especially when the re- 

 lator is describing what only happened to 

 himself ; so, without any further excuse, I pro- 

 ceed to tell an anecdote of a puma: — I had 

 a horse so perfectly broken to firing from his 

 back, that in a partly open country I always 

 used him for all sorts of shooting, instead of 

 going on foot. Looking after deer one day, 

 I crossed a very broad but then shallow 

 river, and ascending the other bank, met two 

 little children, of about five years of age, 

 carrying between them an earthen pot to 

 fetch water from the river. Knowing that 



