THOUGH not very common now in the Northern States of America or Canada, the Puma, or panther, is yet to be found in considerable numbers in the dense cane-brakes of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, whilst in the Everglades of Florida it is perhaps as plentiful as ever. The Seminole Indians having been forcibly removed from that State several years ago, the wild animals of those jungly regions have been rarely disturbed by white hunters, and thus have been left to increase in peace.

Naturalists have given the dimensions of the adult puma as being about four feet, or four feet and a half long in the body, and the tail at from two to two and a half feet. These estimates have, probably, been given from the measurements of animals killed in the Northern or Middle States, as in the warmer and more genial climate of the extreme South they often exceed this size. I once saw the skin of a panther which had been killed on the Trinity River, in Texas, hanging at a shopdoor in Gralveston, which was said to measure nine feet six inches; and allowing several inches for increase of length, produced by stretching the skin to dry, beyond its living measurement, the animal alive must have measured nearly nine feet.

It is very rare in the South that the largest and most ferocious animals attack man.