Hunting the bobcat was only an incident. Our true quarry was the cougar. I had long been anxious to make a regular hunt after cougar in a country where the beasts were plentiful and where we could follow them with a good pack of hounds. Astonishingly little of a satisfactory nature has been left on record about the cougar by hunters, and in most places the chances for observation of the big cats steadily grow less. They have been thinned out almost to the point of extermination throughout the Eastern States. In the Rocky Mountain region they are still plentiful in places, but are growing less so; while on the contrary the wolf, which was exterminated even more quickly in the East, in the West has until recently been increasing in numbers. In northwestern Colorado a dozen years ago, cougars were far more plentiful than wolves; whereas at the present day the wolf is probably the more numerous. Nevertheless, there are large areas, here and there among the Rockies, in which cougars will be fairly plentiful for years to come. [Illustration: BOBCAT IN PINYON From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart ] No American beast has been the subject of so much loose writing or of such wild fables as the cougar. Even its name is unsettled. In the Eastern States it is usually called panther or painter; in the Western States, mountain lion, or, toward the South, Mexican lion. The Spanish-speaking people usually call it simply lion. It is, however, sometimes called cougar in the West and Southwest of our country, and in South America, puma. As it is desirable where possible not to use a name that is misleading and is already appropriated to some entirely different animal, it is best to call it cougar. The cougar is a very singular beast, shy and elusive to an extraordinary degree, very cowardly and yet bloodthirsty and ferocious, varying wonderfully in size, and subject, like many other beasts, to queer freaks of character in occasional individuals. This fact of individual variation in size and temper is almost always ignored in treating of the animal; whereas it ought never to be left out of sight.