nger, looser hair
does not admit of. But with all these external differences I am aware
that there will be objection to classifying it as a separate species,
unless the osteological divergences can be satisfactorily
determined, and for this purpose it would be necessary to examine
a large series of authenticated skulls of the two kinds.

The concurrence of evidence as to the habits of this species is that
it is chiefly found in hilly jungles preying on wild animals, wild
pigs, and monkeys, but not unfrequently, as I know, haunting the
outskirts of villages for the sake of stray ponies and cattle. The
largest pard I have ever seen was shot by one of my own shikaris in
the act of stalking a pony near a village. I was mahseer-fishing close
by at the time, and had sent on the man, a little before dusk, to
a village a few miles off, to arrange for beating up a tiger early
next day. Jerdon says this is the kind most common in Bengal, but
he does not say in what parts of Bengal, and on what authority. I
have no doubt it abounds in Sontalia and Assam, and many other hilly
parts. At Colgong, Mr. Barnes informed him that many cases of human
beings killed by pards were known in the Bhaugulpore district. At
Seonee we had one which devastated a tract of country extending to
about 18 miles in diameter. He began his work in 1857 by carrying
off a follower of the Thakur of Gurwarra, on whom we were keeping
a watch during the troublous times of the mutiny. My brother-in-law,
Colonel Thomson and I, went after him under the supposition that it
was a tiger that had killed the man, and it was not till we found
the body at the bottom of a rocky ravine that we discovered it was
a pard. During the beat he came out before us, went on, and was turned
back by an elephant and came out again a third time before us; but
we refrained from firing as we expected a man-eating tiger. I left
Seonee for two years to join the Irregular Corps to which I had been
posted, and after the end of the campaign, returned again to district
work, and found that the most dreaded man-eater in the district was
the pard whose life we had spared. There was a curious legend in
connection with him, like the superstitious stories of Wehr wolves
in Northern Europe. I have dealt fully with it in "Seonee," and
Forsyth has also given a version of it in the 'Highlands of Central
India,' as he came to the district soon after the animal was destroyed.
Some of the aborigines of the