THE LEOPARD.
[From a photograph by Gambier Bolton. Copyright.]
Major H. A. Leveson (“Sport in Many Lands”) thus describes the panther: “This animal frequently measures eight feet in length from its nose to the end of its tail. It has a well-defined, bony ridge along the centre of its skull for the attachment of the muscles of the neck, which is not noticeable in the leopard or cheetah. The skin, which shines like silk, and is of a rich tawny or orange tan above and white underneath, is marked with seven rows of rosettes, each consisting of an assemblage of black spots, in the centre of which the tawny or fulvous ground of the coat shows distinctly through the black. Its extremities are marked with horseshoe-shaped or round black spots. Few animals can surpass the panther in point of beauty, and none in elegance or grace. His every motion is easy and flexible in the highest degree; he bounds among the rocks and woods with an agility truly surprising—now stealing along the ground with the silence of a snake, now crouching with his fore-paws extended and his head laid between them, while his chequered tail twitches impatiently, and his pale, gooseberry eyes glare mischievously upon his unsuspecting victim.” Captain J. H. Baldwin (“Large and Small Game of Bengal”) writes in much the same strain upon the specific differences between these varieties, and he is at a loss to understand how Dr. Jerdon and Mr. Blyth, Captain Hodgson and Sir Walter Elliot, can regard panthers and leopards as of the same species. The difference between their skulls—that of the leopard’s being oval, while the panther’s is round—is, he asserts, “of itself conclusive evidence upon this disputed question;” and besides that, “the two animals altogether differ from one another in size and character.”
Technical discussions have been avoided so far as it was possible to do so, but here it seems necessary to say briefly that head-measurements as a basis for classification, whether among beasts or men, have always failed; also that developed ridges and processes are for the most part merely concomitants of more massive skulls in larger animals whose muscles are of greater size; and that bulk by itself means very little, and varies in most cases very much. Finally, the coat-markings, in their minor details, of all animals whose skins are variegated, constantly differ in the same species. Among Felidæ one scarcely sees two lions with like manes, or two tigers with identical stripes. As for the spotted or rosetted groups, their spots not only vary in members of specific aggregates, but even upon different sides of the same creature’s body.
Lockington (“Riverside Natural History”) states that “the leopard (including both varieties of Felis pardus under this term) is very variable in size and color.” Stanley, Emin Pasha (Dr. Schnitzer), and Hissman speak of those in Somali-land as much larger than any others in Africa, yet it is certain that there is but one true species now extant, and that this includes those forms already spoken of, together with the snow leopard of the Himalayas, the long-furred, ring-marked, bushy-tailed variety of Manchuria and Corea, and the “black tiger” of India and the Malasian Archipelago, which is nothing but a panther with its colors reversed,—a “sport,” as G. A. R. Dawson (“Nilgiri Sporting Reminiscences”) calls it, and which according to him is “of a uniform dull black color, with its spots (of a fulvous tint) showing in particular lights.” Colonel A. C. McMaster proved that these dark cubs had been found in litters having the usual coloration. General Hamilton demonstrated the same thing, and Colonel Pollok (“Natural History Notes”) states that “the black panther, which is very common towards Mergeri and Tavay, is only a lusus naturæ.” He himself “saw a female panther near Shoaydung, with two cubs, one black and one spotted.”
The “snow leopard” is very little known on account of the solitary and inaccessible regions it inhabits. “It is the rarest event,” says Colonel F. Markham (“Shooting in the Himalayas”), “to see one, though it roams about apparently as much by day as by night. Even the shepherds who pass the whole of the summer months, year after year, in the area where it lives, that is to say, above the forests where there is little or no cover ... seldom see one.... It is surprising and unaccountable how it eludes observation.” He describes its ground color as being of a dingy white, with faint yellowish-brown markings, and represents the animal to be considerably smaller than its congeners of the hot country below. Captain Baldwin, however, saw a skin as large as a panther’s. This was “of a light gray color, with irregular black spots. There was a black line running lengthways over the hind quarters, the hair was long on the neck, and the tail was remarkably long, ringed with black, and black at the tip.”
An animal of the same species, and very like this, is confined to the equatorial belt of Africa. It is as rare as the “snow leopard,” and has only been seen once or twice. Andersson (“Lake N’gami”) reports that the “maned leopard” was mistaken by him for a lion. This name is a translation of the native title—N’gulula, and Leslie, who knew more about it than any one else, states that “a cub is gray, light, and furry.... The half-grown one, gray also, but the spots are faintly distinguishable. In the full-grown animal they are perfectly plain, but very dirty and undefined. There is also a peculiar gray hog mane.” W. H. Drummond (“Large Game and Natural History of Southern Africa”) also met with the N’gulula, and he, like Andersson, thought at first that it was a small lion, which it greatly resembled “in shape and color.”
We may now turn from the varieties of Felis pardus and their external characteristics, to an investigation of those traits which have become organized in them during the long course of ages in which they have become specialized, physically and mentally, for a predatory life.
To know what an animal of this kind feeds on, and how it takes its prey, is also to know much about its structure, temper, and disposition. Neither lions nor tigers find the game upon which they subsist in trees, and the latter, therefore, rarely climb, while there is no account of the former having been seen to do so.
With the panther and leopard this is quite different. There are no climbers more expert than these beasts. As the Panama chief said to the explorer Oxenham, “Everything that has blood in it is food”; to these animals many things without blood, or at least without red blood, are food, for they eat the larva of insects, insects themselves, and birds’ eggs; likewise many fowls, from the splendid peacock to a common crow, which, as Sir Samuel Baker remarks, “lives by his wits, and is one of the cleverest birds in creation.” The panther preys on deer more commonly than any other kind of game, although it destroys reptiles, rodents, etc., and wild pigs in great numbers. Perhaps a wild boar, the “grim gray tusker” of Anglo-Indian tales and hunting songs, “laughs at a panther,” as General Shakespear (“Wild Sports of India”) declares. But all the weaker members of his race become victims to this spotted robber’s partiality for pork. Monkeys, too, from the sacred Hanuman down through all secular grades, are eaten with avidity by these animals, and they kill great quantities of them despite their cunning. There is nothing alive of which monkeys are so much afraid.