to devote to men.

When hunted without dogs they never charge unless actually cornered, and, as a general rule, not even then, unless the man chooses to come right up to them. I knew of one Indian being killed in 1887, and near my ranch a cowboy was mauled; but in the first instance the cougar had been knocked down and the Indian was bending over it when it revived; and in the next instance, the cowboy literally came right on top of the animal. Now, under such circumstances either a bull elk or a blacktail buck will occasionally fight; twice I have known of wounded wapiti regularly charging, and one of my own cowboys, George Myer, was very roughly handled by a blacktail buck which he had wounded. In all his experience Goff says that he never but once had a cougar start to charge him, and on that occasion it was promptly killed by a bullet. Usually the cougar does not even charge at the dogs beyond a few feet, confining itself to seizing or striking any member of the pack which comes close up; although it will occasionally, when much irritated, make a rapid dash and seize some bold assailant. While I was on my hunt, one of Goff's brothers lost a hound in hunting a cougar; there were but two hounds, and the cougar would not tree for them, finally seizing and killing one that came too near. At the same time a ranchman not far off set his cattle dog on a cougar, which after a short run turned and killed the dog. But time and again cougars are brought to bay or treed by dogs powerless to do them the slightest damage; and they usually meet their death tamely when the hunter comes up. I have had no personal experience either with the South American jaguar or the Old-World leopard or panther; but these great spotted cats must be far more dangerous adversaries than the cougar.

It is true, as I have said, that a cougar will follow a man ; but then a weasel will sometimes do the same thing. Whatever the cougar's motive, it is certain that in the immense majority of cases there is not the slightest danger of his attacking the man he follows. Dr. Hart Merriam informs me, however, that he is satisfied that he came across one genuine instance of a cougar killing a man whose tracks he had dogged. It cannot be too often repeated,

that we must never lose sight of the individual variation in character and conduct among wild beasts. A thousand times a cougar might follow a man either not intending or not daring to attack him, while in the thousandth and first case it might be that the temper of the beast and the conditions were such that the attack would be made.

Other beasts show almost the same wide variation in temper. Wolves, for instance, are normally exceedingly wary of man. In this Colorado hunt I often came across their tracks, and often heard their mournful, but to my ears rather attractive, baying at night, but I never caught a glimpse of one of them; nor during the years when I spent much of my time on my ranch did I ever know of a wolf venturing to approach anywhere near a man in the day-time, though I have had them accompany me after nightfall. But on the Keystone Ranch, where I spent three weeks on this particular trip, an incident which occurred before my arrival showed that wolves occasionally act with extraordinary boldness. The former owner of the ranch, Colonel Price, and one of the cowhands, Sabey (both of whom told me the story), were driving out in a buggy from Meeker to the ranch accompanied by a setter dog. They had no weapon with them. Two wolves joined them and made every effort to get at the dog. They accompanied the wagon for nearly a mile, venturing to within twenty yards of it. They paid no heed whatever to the shouts and gestures of the men, but did not quite dare to come to close quarters, and finally abandoned their effort. Now, this action on their part was, as far as my experience goes, quite as exceptional among American wolves as it is exceptional for a cougar to attack a man. course, these wolves were not after the men. They were simply after the dog; but I have never within my own experience come upon another instance of wolves venturing to attack a domestic animal in the immediate presence of and protected by a man. Exactly as these two wolves suddenly chose to behave with an absolutely unexpected daring, so a cougar will occasionally lose the fear of man which is inherent in its race.

Of

Normally, then, the cougar is not in any way a formidable foe to man, and it is cer

tainly by no means as dangerous to dogs as it could be if its courage and intelligence equalled its power to do mischief. It strikes with its forepaw like a cat, lacerating the foe with its sharp claws; or else it holds the animal with them, while the muscular forearm draws it in until the fatal bite may be inflicted. Whenever possible it strives to bite an assailant in the head. Occasionally, when fighting with a large dog, a cougar will throw itself on its back and try to rip open its antagonist with its hind feet. Male cougars often fight des perately among themselves.

Although a silent beast, yet at times, especially during the breeding season, the males utter a wild scream, and the females also cry or call. I once heard one cry while prowling for game. On an evening in the summer of 1897 Dr. Merriam had a rather singular experience with a cougar. His party was camped in the forest by Tannum Lake, on the east slope of the Cascades, near the headwaters of a branch of the Yakima. The horses were feeding near by. Shortly after dark a cougar cried loudly in the gloom, and the frightened horses whinnied and stampeded. The cougar cried a number of times afterward, but the horses did not again answer. None of them was killed, however; and next morning, after some labor, all were again gathered together. In 1884 I had a somewhat similar experience with a bear, in the Bighorn Mountains.

Occasionally, but not often, the cougars I shot snarled or uttered a low, thunderous growl as we approached the tree, or as the dogs came upon them in the cave. In the death-grapple they were silent, excepting that one young cougar snarled and squawled as it battled with the dogs.

A

The cougar is sometimes tamed. friend of mine had one which was as goodnatured as possible until it was a year old, when it died. But one kept by another friend, while still quite young, became treacherous and dangerous. I doubt if they would ever become as trustworthy as a tame wolf, which, if taken when a very young puppy, will often grow up exactly like a dog. At the present time there is such a tame wolf with the Colorado Springs greyhounds. It is safer and more friendly than many collies, and is on excellent terms with the great greyhounds; though these

are themselves solely used to hunt wolves and coyotes, and tackle them with headlong ferocity, having, unaided, killed a score or two of the large wolves and hundreds of coyotes.

Hunting in the snow we were able to tell very clearly what the cougars whose trails we were following had been doing. Goff's eye for a trail was unerring, and he read at a glance the lesson it taught. All the cougars which we came across were living exclusively upon deer, and their stomachs were filled with nothing else; much hair being mixed with the meat. In each case the deer was caught by stalking and not by lying in wait, and the cougar never went up a tree except to get rid of the dogs. In the daytime it retires to a ledge, or ravine, or dense thicket, starting to prowl as the dark comes on. So far as I could see the deer in each case was killed by a bite in the throat or neck. The cougar simply rambled around in likely ground until it saw or smelled its quarry, and then crept up stealthily until with one or two tremendous bounds it was able to seize its prey. If, as frequently happened, the deer took alarm in time to avoid the first few bounds, it always got away, for though the cougar is very fast for a short distance, it has no wind whatever. It cannot pursue a deer for any length of time, nor run before a dog for more than a few hundred yards, if the dog is close up at the start. I was informed by the ranchmen that when in May the deer leave the country, the cougars turn their attention to the stock, and are very destructive. They have a special fondness for horseflesh and kill almost every colt where they are plentiful, while the big males work havoc with the saddle bands on the ranches, as well as among the brood mares.

Except in the case of a female with young they are roving, wandering beasts, and roam great distances. After leaving their day lairs, on a ledge, or in a gorge or thicket, they spend the night travelling across the flats, along the ridges, over the spurs. When they kill a deer they usually lie not very far away, and do not again wander until they are hungry. The males travel very long distances in the mating season. Their breeding time is evidently irregular. We found kittens with their eyes not yet open in the middle

of January. Two of the female cougars we killed were pregnant-in one case the young would have been born almost immediately, that is, in February; and in the other case in March. One, which had a partially grown young one of over fifty pounds with it, still had milk in its teats. At the end of January we found a male and female together, evidently mating. Goff has also found the young just dropped in May, and even June. The females outnumber the males. Of the fourteen we killed, but three were males.

When a cougar kills a deer in the open it invariably drags it under some tree or shelter before beginning to eat. All the carcasses we came across had been thus dragged, the trail showing distinctly in the snow. Goff, however, asserted that in occasional instances he had known a cougar to carry a deer so that only its legs trailed on the ground.

The fourteen cougars we killed showed the widest variation not only in size but in color, as shown by the following table. Some were as slaty-gray as deer when in the so-called "blue;" others, rufous, almost as bright as deer in the "red." I use these two terms to describe the color phases; though in some instances the tint was very undecided. The color phase evidently has nothing to do with age, sex, season, or locality. In this table the first cougar is the one killed by Stewart, the sixth by Webb. The length is measured in a straight line, "between uprights," from the nose to the extreme tip of the tail, when the beast was stretched out. The animals were weighed with the steelyard and also spring scales. Before measuring, we pulled the beast out as straight as we possibly could; and as the biggest male represents about, or very nearly, the maximum for the species, it is easy to see that there can be no basis for the talk one sometimes hears about ten and eleven foot cougars. No cougar, measured at all fairly, has ever come anywhere near reaching the length of nine feet. The fresh hide can easily be stretched a couple of feet extra.

It

I sent the cougar and bobcat skulls to Dr. Merriam, at the Biological Survey, Department of Agriculture, Washington. He wrote me as follows: "The big [cougar] skull is certainly a giant. I have compared it with the largest in our collection from British Columbia and Wyoming, and find it larger than either. is in fact the largest skull of any member of the Felis concolor group I have seen. A hasty preliminary examination indicates that the animal is quite different from the northwest coast form, but that it is the same as my horse-killer from Wyoming— Felis hippolestes. In typical Felis concolor from Brazil the skull is lighter, the braincase thinner and more smoothly rounded, devoid of the strongly developed sagittal crest; the under jaw straighter and lighter.

"Your series of skulls from Colorado is incomparably the largest, most complete and most valuable series ever brought together from any single locality, and will be of inestimable value in determining the amount of individual variation."

him and gone about her business in life, which was attending to dear Madame, who knew so much better than she what was good for her. It must have been the brightness of the blue sky that had made her head swim when she stopped even for a moment to listen. The intense blue of the eyes that had looked down upon her so beseechingly had held her longer-too long. Yes, Madame was right, of course. It was dull here, and she had been amusVOL. XXX.-47

ing herself, that was all. She would now go down into the garden again and if anyone should join her there in the moonlight she could set matters right by a word. She had been wrong, of course, not to speak that word at once; but again, as Madame said, it was dull here. Down the stairs and through the servants' hall, with the quick step of one who had decided, tripped Madame's kid boots with Louise's little feet in them, bent on Madame's er

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