THE LEOPARD 
(FELIS PARDUS) 
T “- SSS ^HIS animal is fairly common throughout the jungles of India 
and Ceylon, and is sometimes spoken of as the panther. 
Some authorities say there are two varieties, but if so they 
are so similar as to make it difficult for the ordinary sportsman 
to distinguish between them. 
* Cases of melanism are not infrequent, and the writer once 
saw a black specimen killed in Assam, on which the spots were faintly 
visible in certain lights; this colour seems more common in Mysore and 
Southern India. 
The leopard often takes up his abode near a village, especially if there 
is hilly or rocky ground about, and does much damage to the inhabitants. 
He is a most crafty animal, and is very difficult to drive, as he nearly 
always escapes from the side of the beat, or lies low and allows the beaters 
to pass by him. The usual method of shooting is to tether a village goat 
and sit over it during the late afternoon and evening; in this form of sport 
there are a good many blanks. Leopards frequently climb trees, and are 
occasionally spotted lying asleep on some branch, when an easy shot may 
be obtained. As this is one of the most dangerous animals to follow up 
when wounded, the greatest care must be taken in the pursuit. Leopards, 
as well as lions, possess the floating collar bones to which I have alluded 
in the case of the tiger: these should be kept by the shooter. 
When a panther takes to man-eating it does an enormous amount of 
damage. At the Allahabad Exhibition of 1911 particulars of one in the 
Almora district were advertised and a large reward offered for its death. 
It seems hardly credible that this beast can have accounted for the two 
hundred human victims attributed to it in three years, but it may have 
been a female whose offspring had been brought up to join in their mother’s 
deadly propensities. A friend of the writer shot a noted man-eating leopard 
known to have slain thirty -eight human beings, and only got it at last by 
sitting up over the corpse of one of its victims. This sounds rather a grue- 
some form of sport, but any means to exterminate one of these pests 
should be adopted. 
The chita, or hunting leopard (Cyncelurus jubatus), is seldom met with 
and shot. If captured young these felines are kept and trained by some 
native prince to hunt blackbuck. 
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