Anybody who so wishes may call them mountain lions. Where there were
Negro mammies, white children were likely to be haunted in the night by
fear of ghosts. Otherwise, for some children of the South and West,
no imagined terror of the night equaled the panther's scream. The
Anglo-American lore pertaining to the panther is replete with stories of
attacks on human beings. Indian and Spanish lore, clear down to where W.
H. Hudson of the pampas heard it, views the animal as _un amigo de
los cristianos_--a friend of man. The panther is another animal as
interesting for what people associated with him have taken to be facts
as for the facts themselves.
BARKER, ELLIOTT S. _When the Dogs Barked `Treed'_, University of New
Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1946. Mainly on mountain lions, but firsthand
observations on other predatory animals also. Before he became state
game warden, the author was for years with the United States Forest
Service.
HIBBEN, FRANK C. _Hunting American Lions_, New York, 1948; reprinted
by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Mr. Hibben considers
hunting panthers and bears a terribly dangerous business that only
intrepid heroes like him-self would undertake. Sometimes in this book,
but more awesomely in _Hunting American Bears_, he manages to out-zane
Zane Grey, who had to warn his boy scout readers and puerile-minded
readers of added years that _Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon_ is true
in contrast to the fictional _Young Lion Hunter_, which uses some of the
same material.
HUDSON, W. H. _The Naturalist in La Plata_, New York, 1892. A chapter
in this book entitled "The Puma, or Lion of America" provoked an attack
from Theodore Roosevelt (in _Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter_);
but it remains the most delightful narrative-essay yet written on the
subject.
YOUNG, STANLEY PAUL, and GOLDMAN, EDWARD A. _The Puma, Mysterious
American Cat_, American Wildlife Institute, Washington, D. C., 1946.
Scientific, liberal with information of human interest, bibliography.
We get an analysis of the panther's scream but it does not curdle the
blood.
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