The Leopard, or Panther, is undoubtedly the third in importance and interest of the great Cats. From a historical point of view it is more interesting than the Tiger, and would naturally come immediately after the Lion, but its size, ferocity, and beauty are so very inferior to the Tiger’s that it must needs yield to the glorious Bengalee. In the matter of beauty alone it is eclipsed by the Jaguar, but the fact of its having been known from very ancient times, and that of its occurrence in our own hemisphere, must decide us, in the absence of any important characters, anatomical or otherwise, to give it the precedence of its very nearly related American cousin. The Leopard was the only one of the greater feline animals, except the Lion and Tiger, that seems to have been known to the ancients. It is always represented as drawing the chariot of Bacchus, and the forlorn Ariadne is sculptured as riding on one of the spotted steeds of her divine lover. The Panther was also constantly used in the barbarous sports of the amphitheatre, and, in common with the Lion and Tiger, has been both executioner and grave to many a bold-hearted martyr. The Leopard’s skin was a favourite mantle in the olden times in Greece. In the “Iliad,” Homer, speaking of Menelaus, says-- “With a Pard’s spotted hide his shoulders broad He mantled o’er.”---- and the Leopard, or Panther, is given in the “Odyssey” as one of the forms assumed by Proteus, “the Ancient of the Deep.” A curious ancient superstition about the Leopard is embodied in its name. It was thought not to be actually the same animal as the Panther or Pard, but to be a mongrel or hybrid between the male Pard and the Lioness: hence it was called the Lion-panther, or _Leopardus_. This error, as Archbishop Trench tells us, “has lasted into modern times; thus Fuller, ‘Leopards and Mules are properly no creatures.’” Another word-combination was made by the Romans when wishing to find a name for the Giraffe. It is “a creature combining, though with infinitely more grace, yet some of the height and even the proportions of a _Camel_, with the spotted skin of the _Pard_.” They called it “Camelopardus,” the Camel-panther.