FOREST AND STREAM. 
(Jaw. i^j. 
A Panther in Western New York. 
Medina, N, Y., Dec. 22. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
The editorial in your last issue concerning the fear of wild 
-animals contains statements which are rather sweeping, 
conveying the idea that wild animals will always flee 
from the presence of man. There are many well- 
authenticated instances to the contrary. 
Many of your readers will know of the old Lewistoii 
road, so called, running from Batavia, Genesee count}, 
this State, in a northwesterly direction to Lewiston, 
which is at the foot of the rapids in the Niagara River. 
Many of the roads in northern and western New York 
in an early day meandered in the direction of Lewiston 
because that was the great entrepot for all voyagers 
coming by the way of the St. Lawrence, Quebec, Mon- 
treal and Lake Ontario up on to the Great Lakes and 
the surrounding country, Lewiston being in an early 
day a place of considerable consequence. The State of 
New York dug a deep and wide ditch from the Tona- 
wanda Creek to the Oak Orchard Creek for the purpose 
of taking the waters of the Tonawanda into the Oak 
Orchard and thence to Medina to feed the Erie Canal. 
This deep ditch was dug about the year 1822; it is known 
as the Canal or Oak Orchard Feeder. It was dug in 
the Tonawanda swamp along near the western borders 
'of the town of Alabama, in the county of Genesee, down 
into the county of Orleans. This ditch crosses the 
Lewiston. road at the very borders of the Tonawanda 
Swamp. In the years 1848, 1849 and 1850, on the north- 
east corner of the intersection of the Lewiston road with 
this canal feeder, the land had been cleared away; it was 
in early times covered with hemlock trees, and after the 
heinlock trees had been cut away it grew up - into all 
kinds of bushes and briers. It was a great place for 
picking blackberries. 
The writer was raised in the town of Alabama, Genesee 
county, N. Y., and in his youth learned to pick black- 
berries, and has picked a great many baskets and pails 
of blackberries on that ground. A man by the name of 
Hoag, working for my father, desired to have me pilot 
him to the blackberry ground. We all lived at Alabama 
Center, two miles and a half easterly from this canal 
feeder. I stayed with Hoag over night. I was then 
about ten or eleven years of age, and I think it was in 
the vear 1848 that the circumstances I am about to relate 
occurred. We arose about 3 o'clock A. M., and footed 
it two miles and half to this blackberry ground. Wc 
arrived there before daylight, but I being familiar with 
the paths, we went along down into the bushes and 
among the trees quite a distance until it became light 
enough to commence to pick berries. Gradually we 
worked ourselves deeper and deeper into the forest, and 
I recollect very well coming to a spot where the tall 
blackberry bushes hung overloaded with great 
berries as big as the end of a man's finger, I looked to 
the tops of the trees and saw that the sun was rising, by 
the glinting of the rays among the branches of the trees. 
Just then Hoag, who had become separated from myself, 
spoke up in very sharp tones and said: "Stanley, come 
here; here is a wild animal!" I had a dog with me 
which was a fighting dog. I instantly hurried to the 
place where Hoag was— perhaps five or six rods away. 
I found Hoag standing under a hemlock tree with a 
space of perhaps iS feet in diameter around that tree 
where there were no bushes. The bushes outside seemed 
to be a mass of tangled briers and other vegetation. 
There was some animal passing back and forth in front 
of Hoag and myself, not over 15 feet away, snarling and 
snapping his teeth as he crowded his way through the 
bushes. It circled backward and forward tliere perhaps 
ten minutes. Hoag took my knife, and cut an immense 
large club off of a green sapling. I recollect the expres- 
sion that he made, for Hoag was a very nervy fellow. 
After the club was cut he said: "Now let him come!" 
I sicked the dog into the bushes; the dog went in; the 
animal made a lunge for the dog; the dog made one yell, 
and out of the bushes he came; I caught a glimpse of 
the animal, and determined at once that it was a 
panther; I had seen such in the traveling menageries 
of the country. Hoag said that he saw him several 
times, and that he knew that it was a panther. Wc stayed 
a few mimxtes; that animal moved backward and for- 
ward half around the circle, but kept out of our way and 
in the bushes. His snapping and snarling and crowding 
through the bushes were very plain to be heard. We 
started to get away from him. I remember well that 
I could hardly kick the dog away from my feet; he 
kept constantly in front of me; and yet that dog was 
the bully of Alabama Center, so far as dogs were con- 
cerned — it had whipped every dog in the vicinity — but it 
seemed to be frightened very badly. The dog went ahead 
first, and I next, and Hoag in the rear. We would stop, 
every two or three rods and listen. We could hear the 
animal now and then as the dry limbs snapped under 
him. We went substantially in a direct line, nearly half, 
a mile, and within about fifty rods of the outer edge ©t 
the woods. We could hear no more of him, and stopped, 
thinking that we would fill our baskets with berries. 
■ Perhaps fifteen minutes had passed by, and Hoag had 
gone away from me about three or four rods, and I was 
on one side of an immense great log, around which 
the' bushes grew in thick profusion. That animal made 
■one spring, evidently; it struck within about 6 feet of 
me, right in the midst of those bushes, with an immense 
crash. I spoke loudly to Hoag, and we got together 
quickly, prepared for any attack that might be made. 
Just then a number of young men known as the Diviney 
boys, Kelly boys, Horning boys and Green boys, came 
iiito 'the woods" and commenced to yell and halloo like 
so many wild Indians. Perhaps they had been yelling 
away for a minute or so, and then we could plainly hear 
that anirnal jump and run away in bounds. We could 
hear its feet strike pat, pat, pat, as it jitmped along, 
fainter and fainter, the dry leaves and sticks cracking 
under its feet, rmtil the sounds faded away in the distance. 
We went and met those young men, and told them what 
had occurred. A man by the name of Julius Creep 
started with Hoag to hunt up the hemlock tree aboVtJ 
spoken of. Perhaps they had worked for two hourS- to 
find it, and were unable to do so, and came back and 
found me. Hoag asked me if I thought I could find 
the tree. I told him I thought I could, and I led them 
back to the outer edge of the woods where I had 
entered, and I took up the trail there and moved from 
point to point as I had come into the woods, and per 
haps went nearly three-quarters of a mile when I found 
the hemlock tree. The animal had been where we stocd 
and had torn the earth up all about the tree and thrown 
it over the bushes, so that they were literally covered — 
it was light soil. It had torn the bark from the lower 
part of the hemlock tree, and had bit into the side of 
the tree, showing in a good many ways its great wrath 
and anger. The prints of its immense paws were all 
about on the fresh earth. It made no sign of its being 
about us then. 
I recollect very well that this was Sunday. My good 
old mother, who is now living near Alabama Center 
at the ripe age . of almost eighty-nine years, when I 
got home and told her my story, declined to whip me, as 
she would ordinarily have done for trespassing upon the 
Sabbath day; but her economical habits would not allow 
the berries to be thrown away, so she had me go and 
deliver them to another good old lady by the name of 
Morse, who said that she was very glad to get them, 
Sunday or no Sunday. 
In after years, and in the summer of 1855, while read- 
ing law with Brown & Glowacki at Batavia, whose 
office was on the ground floor about three doors east of 
the old Eagle Hotel, one day a couple of men, Harlow 
and Carlow Reynolds by name, and who lived through 
the Tonawanda swamp on the T^ewiston road and about 
DAXIyS MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 
one mile from the feeder bridge as it crosses the Lewis- 
ton road above mentioned, drove up in front of the 
office where I was, and the door being open one of them 
said to me, "Come out here, Stanley, and see your 
panther." Of course, everj^body around Alabama had 
heard of the panther story years before. I went out of 
the office on to the street, and there saw an immense 
panther or California lion, or whatever you may call 
it, lying in a one-horse wagon, with its nose against the 
front end board of the box, there being no hind end 
board, and stretching substantially the whole length of 
the wagon box; its tail, which was about 3^2 feet long, 
was lying out of the hind end of the wagon. It was an 
immense animal. Reynolds' story was that on the night 
before they had gone on a cooning trip, and that their 
dogs had got on the track of something which they 
chased for quite a -distance and treed. They followed 
the dogs to where the animal was treed, and with their 
axes chopped the tree down; that just as the tree was 
falling they saw between themselves and the sky an 
animal jump from the tree, which landed out on the 
ground some distance away, and the dogs took after it 
and treed it again. They followed it up until they came 
to the tree, and in looking up and getting it against the 
sky, so that they coidd see it, they discovered that it was 
a large animal of some kind. One of them stayed at the 
tree with the dogs and the other went perhaps a couple 
of miles away to his house and got a gun. He came 
back, and by "the aid of a lantern fired at the animal, and 
luckily enough one of -the::. bullefs .struck the animal in 
the heu^, so that it fell, ^As' it :>Game^to the ground they 
saw that it was" an iiifiiense anirnal. /One of them strtick 
it on the head with ; the - sharp edge - pf the' axe, which 
entered the brain and kiljed it.' Froni there they brought 
it to Batavia, and of ^coiirsevthe'-pedp^e of Batavia gath- 
ered about and saw it. " Afterward that -animal ,vytas stuffed 
and was" exhibited by Harlow ReynoW.s-'for- several years 
in the different county fairs at Brockport, Batavia, Lock-;,, 
poi-t, Albion, and Medina arid other places. He had a 
tent and charged 10 cents admission: Thousands and 
thousands of persons saw it. It was an immense panther, 
a great deal larger than any that I have ever seen in any 
inenagerie. It was killed about one 'nxile from the place 
where Hoag and myself had seen one a fcA^ years before. 
It was probably the same animal, only grown to much 
greater proportions. I never have had any doubt that 
if one person had been there under that hemlock tree 
instead of two and a dog that animal would have attacked 
that person. It certainly did not flee, but fojlowed us 
until it had listened to the yelling of what anybody could- 
understand was at least six or seven individuals, who 
were perhaps fifty rods away from if. ' 
S. E. FlLKTN.S. 
Obscure instincts. 
Edihfr Forest and Stream: 
I was much interested in a letter signed E. P. A., iif 
your issue of Dec. 8, on the subject of obscure instincts, 
especially as I had just been reading Darwin's book on 
the "Origin of Species." It occurred to me that the case 
mentioned could be explained without much violence to 
the theory of evolution. Your correspondent says the 
case is this: "The red-shouldered hawk usually rears but 
one brood of young each season. But if accident de- 
.stroys the nest they will persist and raise a second or 
even a third brood, if necessary to bring one brood to 
maturity." 
To my mind the statement suggests its own explana- 
tion — it is simply a case of the persistency of the pro- 
creative in.stinct. It may appear remarkable if we assume 
that the hawk is incapable of mating and nesting except 
at one season of the year, but I do not think we should 
assume anything of the sort. We are accustomed to 
birds mating in the spring, but I fancy this is a habit 
induced by climatic conditions. It is certain that young 
birds hatched in the early summer, when food is abun- 
dant, have the best if not the only chance of attaining 
sufficient size and strength either to migrate or endure 
the coming winter. And it is easy to understand that if 
some varieties of a species, or even some individuals of 
a variety, paired persistently in the spring their progeny 
inheriting the same propensity would rapidly supersede 
the progeny of birds which paired later in the season or 
at irregular times. A habit of this kind might easily be- 
come fi.Ked in a few generations, solely by the "survival 
of the fittest." Yet at the same time, under special con- 
ditions, birds might mate at unusual times, just as occurs 
with domestic fowl. Left to themselves with abundant 
food only in the summer time, they mate in the early 
spring, but with proper care and protection hens will lay 
at other seasons. 
It must be admitted that this hardly explains the case 
of the red-shouldered hawk rearing successive broods 
when the first are destroyed. I would suggest that this 
is due to the procreative instinct persisting until satisfied, 
and that it is not satisfied short of the raising of a brood 
to maturity. An analogous case occurs with many plants, 
notably annuals, such as the sweet pea. Sown in the 
spring this plant flowers in eight or ten weeks, and if 
the flowers are fertilized with pollen, as they are sure to 
be if the necessary insects are plentiful, the seed-pods set 
and develop rapidly. Left to itself the plant ceases to 
flower, and throws all its energy into maturing seed. 
Where this is done it dies — quite early in the season. If, 
hoAvever, the flowers are kept cut the plant goes on pro- 
ducing more until destroyed by frost. Every gardener 
knows this, and it is explained on the ground that the 
propensity of the plant is procreative — to mature its seed 
— and as often as this is thwarted it will put forth more 
flowers and try again. The seed setting of the plant 
corresponds to the layin.g of the eggs, so far as the. cycle 
of life is concerned, and when a check occurs at this stage 
both plant and bird begin again. The procreative propeti- 
sity is not satisfied short of the reasonably assured 
propagation of the species— in other words, until the off- 
spring can shift for itself. 
There is just another -point raised by your corre- 
spondent — the failure of transmission of acquired chaiac- 
teristics or of mutilations, even when practical for many 
successive generations. As I understand it evolution 
only assumes the possible transmission of spontaneous 
individual variations, all of which presumably arise — no 
one knows why — before birth, and are an essential peculi- 
arity of the individual. Between these and violent mutila- 
tions there is no parallel. Thus a Flathead Indian fathers 
a child of normal skull, because his peculiarity has been 
acquired after birth, and he has no power to transmit it. 
But let a papoose be born flat-headed and the peculiarity 
win stand a very good chance of transmission. Nature 
declines to accept innovations from the clumsy hand of 
man, nor can man often imitate the processes. As I 
write a narcissus bud in my window is ready to burst 
If I attempted to open it, using every care and delicate 
tools, I should only spoil it. By leaving it alone it will 
open perfectly in due time. If we cannot imitate nature 
in so .simple an operation as this, how can we expect to 
counterfeit her higher and subtler processes? 
Wm, Q. Phillips. 
Clinton, Ont., Dec. 20. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication .should reach us at the 
tatest by Mgnday and as much earlier as practicably. 
Engflish Woodcock. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Here is an item to deepen the mystery of Jay .Beebe's 
English woodcock. About twenty years ago I was on a 
woodcock rampage on the hills back of Peter Cooper's 
place at Ringwood, N. J., during the fall flight, and one 
of the family — but at least twice as large as a legitimate 
member had any right to be— flushed very wild, and T 
thought it useless to make him wilder by shooting, but 
I: marked his course and determined to have a shot' at'" 
him if he rose again within a reasonable distance, but I 
could not get within lOO yards of him, and reluctantly 
gave up the chase. I never mentioned the incident ex-^'- 
cept to an occasional sportsman, but it has rerflaiffed aia* 
annoying puzzle with me ever since. If a EuYbpeaif- 
woodcock, how did he get here? ' 
Many years ago I suggested, through Forest and 
Stream, that one of the most desirable foreign birds to 
introduce into this country was the splendid European 
woodcock, and also suggested that if it was ever done they 
should be liberated in some place like the Dismal Swamn. 
where they would have a chance to "increase and multi- 
ply," but I do not know that the attempt was ever 
made. 
A friend of mine once kept a native woodcock in con- 
finement for some time, and every night he bored the earth 
full of holes in search of the worms that he was con- 
stantly supplied with, and I feel quite sure a success could 
be made of an attempt to bring over the foreign bird. 
Various kinds of foreign game birds have been intro- 
duced from the remotest corners of the earth, while this 
most magnificent feflow has been utterly ignored. 1 
sincerely hope that Forest and Stream can stir up some 
wealthy sportsman to make the attempt. 
Diov.utjs, 
