"_The panther, knowing that his spotted hide
Doth please all beasts, but that his looks them fray,
Within a bush his dreadful head doth hide
To let them gaze, while he on them doth prey._"
SPENSER, Sonnet.
This beast, like the leopard, has been the object of much mistaken or
fictitious history. Pliny, who is responsible for many of the errors in
natural history since his time, says of the panther: "It is said that all
four-footed beasts are wonderfully delighted and enticed by the smell of
panthers; but their hideous looke and crabbed countenance which they
bewray so soon as they show their heads skareth them as much again:
therefore their manner is to hide their heads, and when they have trained
other beasts within their reach by their sweet savour, they fall upon them
and worry them."[23] And again, Sir William Segar, Garter King-of-Arms,
following the same credulous historian, says: "The panther is admired of
all other beasts for the beauty of his skyn, being spotted with variable
colours, and beloved of them for the sweetness of his breath that
streameth forth of his nostrils and ears like smoke which our paynters
mistaking, corruptly do make fire."[24]
[Illustration: Panther incensed.]
It is, however, more probable that the creature was represented emitting
flame and smoke to denote and give characteristic expression to the native
savagery of the brute when irritated. If one can imagine the terror
inspired by remorseless and unpitying fury, sudden and impetuous, we see
its object fairly typified in the panther "incensed." The idea of fire and
smoke darting from its mouth, eyes and ears was doubtless suggested by
that habit peculiar to the feline race, observable even in the domestic
cat, to "spit fire" and "swear" when rudely attacked, and as an emblem in
this sense it is extremely well indicative of sudden fury.
Guillam says: "Some authors are of opinion that there are no panthers bred
in Europe; but in Africa, Lybia and Mauritania they are plentiful. The
panther is a beast of a beautiful aspect, by reason of the manifold
variety of his divers coloured spots wherewith his body is overspread. As
a lion doth in most things resemble the nature of a man, so, after a sort,
doth the panther of a woman; for it is a beautiful beast, and fierce, yet
very loving to their young ones, and will defend them with the hazard of
their own lives; and if they miss them, they bewail their loss with loud
and miserable howling."
The Lancastrian badge "the panther," says Planché, "which is attributed by
Sir William Segar to Henry VI. and blazoned passant guardant argent
spotted of all colours with vapour issuant from her mouth and ears; but
there is no authority quoted for it, and there is no example extant, the
only collateral evidence being the supporters of the Somerset Dukes of
Beaufort, who are supposed to have used it as a token of their Lancastrian
descent." The dexter supporter of the Duke of Beaufort thus is blazoned:
_Dexter, a panther argent, semée of torteaux, hurts and pomies
alternately, flames issuant from the mouth and ears proper, gorged with a
plain collar, chained, or_.
The heraldic panther, or as it is more frequently termed, a panther
incensed, is always borne _guardant_, _i.e._, full-faced; and "incensed,"
that is to say, it is depicted with flames and smoke issuing from its
mouth and ears. Its coat is spotted of various tinctures as the blazon may
state.
Odet de Foix, Sieur de Lautrec, Marshal of France (+ 1528) being
considered a person of fierce appearance, took for device a panther, with
the motto "Allicit ulterius" ("He entices further"), alluding to the
attractive power of that animal notwithstanding its fierce exterior, "an
evidence," remarks a modern writer, "that he had as much vanity as
ambition."
The town of Lucca for arms bears a panther: "_La pantera, che Lucca
abbraccia e onora_."
Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, surnamed the Great (+ 1518), a celebrated Italian
soldier, bore a panther on his standard, with the motto, "Mens sibi
conscia facti" ("The mind conscious to itself of the deed"), the panther
signifying foresight (providence) from the number of eyes in his coat.
Others said he wished to imply that he knew how to manage for himself in
the various changes of his capricious fortune.[25]
[Illustration: The Lynx.]