sionally seen to the southward among the Catskills, where they were formerly so numerous as to have given a name to the stream, and the mountains whence it flows. The Dutch called this creature “Het Cat,” or “Het Catlos," which, says Judge Benson, was “also their name for the domestic cat." Kater is the male; but in the Benson Memoir, the word is not spelt with the double a, Kaaterskill, as we frequently see it now-a-days, when few of us speak Dutch. Catskill, or Katerskill, however, would appear to be equally correct, and the last has the merit of greater peculiarity. The old Hollanders had very formidable ideas of these animals, which they believed at first to be lions, from their skins, and the representations of the Indians. Their color is tawny, or reddish gray. When young, they are spotted; but these marks are supposed to disappear when the animal sheds its hair for the first time. The tail is darker at the extremity; the ears are blackish without, fight within. The largest panther preserved among us is found in the Museum of Utica, and was killed by a hunter in Herkimer county; it measured eleven feet three inches in length. Their usual length is from seven to ten feet.[1]
They are said generally to frequent ledges of rocks inaccessible to man, and called panther ledges by the hunters; but they will often wander far for food. They are decidedly nocturnal, and rarely move by daylight. They prey upon deer, and all the lesser quadrupeds. They seem rather shy of man in general, but are very capable of destroying him when aroused. An instance of a very fierce attack from a panther is given in the Penny Magazine; and a man was killed by a “catamount,” in this county, some fifty years ago. It is now more than forty years since any animal of the
- ↑ Dr. De Kay's Zoology of New York.
