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RURAL HOURS. 
sionally seen to the southward among the Catskills, where they 
were formerly so numerous as to have given a name to the stream, 
and the mountains whence it flows. The Dutch called this creature 
" Het Cat," or " Het Catlos," which, says Judge Benson, was " also 
their name for the domestic cat." Katcr is the male ; but in the 
Benson Memoir, the word is not spelt with the double a, Kaaters- 
kill, as we frequently see it now-a-days, when few of us speak 
Dutch. Catskill, or Katerskill, however, would appear to be 
equally correct, and the last has the merit of greater peculiarity. 
The old Hollanders had very formidable ideas of these animals, 
which they believed at first to be lions, from their skins, and the 
representations of the Indians. Their color is tawny, or reddish 
gray. When young, they are spotted ; but these marks are sup- 
posed to disappear when the animal sheds its hair for the first 
time. The tail is darker at the extremity ; the ears are blackish 
without, fight within. The largest panther preserved among us 
is found in the Museum of Utica, and was killed by a hunter 
in Herkimer county ; it measured eleven feet three inches in 
length. Their usual length is from seven to ten feet.'^* 
They are said generally to frequent ledges of rocks inaccessible 
to man, and called ijantlier ledges by the hunters ; but they will 
often wander far for food. They are decidedly nocturnal, and 
rarely move by daylight. They prey upon deer, and all the lesser 
quadrupeds. They seem rather shy of man in general, but are very 
capable of destroying him when aroused. An instance of a very 
fierce attack from a panther is given in the Penny Magazine ; and a 
man was killed by a " catamount," in this county, some fifty years 
ago. It is now more than forty years since any animal of the 
* Dr. Do Kay's Zoology of New York. 
