COUGAR. 
311 
rant and timid, has been nearly exterminated in all our Atlantic States, 
and we do not recollect a single well authenticated instance where any 
hunter’s life fell a sacrifice in a Cougar hunt. 
Among the mountains of the head-waters of the Juniatta river, as we 
were informed, the Cougar is so abundant, that one man has killed for 
some years, from two to five, and one very hard winter, he killed seven. 
In this part of the country the Cougar is hunted with half-bred hounds, 
the full-blooded dogs lacking courage to attack so large and fierce look- 
ing an animal when they overtake it. The hunt is conducted much in 
the manner of a chase after the common wild-cat. The Cougar is 
“ treed ” after running about fifteen or twenty minutes, and generally 
shot, but sometimes it shews fight before it takes to a tree, and the hunters 
consider it great sport : we heard of an instance of one of these fights, in 
which the Cougar got hold of a dog, and was killing it, when the hunter 
in his anxiety to save his dog, rushed upon the Cougar, seized him by the 
tail and broke his back with a single blow of an axe. 
According to the relations of old hunters, the Cougar has three or four 
young at a litter. We have heard of an instance of one being found, a 
very old female, in whose den there were five young, about as large as cats, 
we believe, however, that the usual number of young, is two. 
The dens of this species are generally near the mouth of some cave in 
the rocks, where the animal’s lair is just far enough inside to be out of 
the rain ; and not in this respect like the dens of the bear, which are some- 
times ten or twelve yards from the opening of a large crack or fissure in 
the rocks. In the Southern States, where there are no caves or rocks, tlie 
lair of the Cougar is generally in a very dense thicket, or in a cane-brake. 
It is a rude sort of bed of sticks, weeds, leaves, and grasses or mosses, 
and where the canes arch over it ; as they are evergreen, their long point- 
ed leaves turn the rain at all" seasons of the year. We have never ob- 
served any bones or fragments of animals they had fed upon, at the lairs 
of the Cougar, and suppose they always feed on what they catch near the 
spot where they capture the prey. 
The tales related of the cry of the Cougar in the forest in imitation of 
the call of a lost traveller, or the cry of a child, must be received with 
much caution, and may in many of their exaggerations be set down as 
vulgar errors. In a state of captivity, we have never heard the male ut- 
tering any other note than a low growl ; the female, however, we have 
frequently heard uttering a kind of mewing like that of a cat, but a more 
prolonged and louder note, that could be heard at the distance of about 
two hundred yards. All the males, however, of the cat kind, at the sea- 
son when the sexes seek each other, emit remarkable and startling cries. 
