There are few animals more beautiful than the leopard, which inhabits India and Africa. Looking at its handsome fur, we cannot fail to be struck with the regular way in which the black spots or rings are arranged upon the reddish-yellow ground, and how regularly they vary in shape and size in different parts of the body.

Besides the ordinary spotted leopard there is, however, a black leopard. It is found in India and some other countries of southern Asia where the ordinary leopard lives, and seems most common upon the high lands. It is very much scarcer than the ordinary leopard, and is, indeed, very rare. The natives of India have a great dread of it, for they think it is more cunning, more ferocious and stronger than the spotted leopard, which is one of the fiercest and most active of the flesh-eating animals. It climbs trees and sports among the branches with all the agility of a cat. It is as ferocious as the tiger, and though not so large, its activity and strength make it a very dangerous foe.

Though the black leopard is different in colour from the ordinary leopard, it is in other respects very similar, and naturalists now regard it as only a variety of the spotted leopard. After getting together all the information which they can about the colours of the leopard and similar animals, they have come to the conclusion that the leopard family has a tendency to turn to black. This does not mean that full-grown spotted leopards sometimes turn black quickly, but that the cubs are occasionally born black, or grow dark soon after they are born.

The leopard is also known to show other variations of colour, but examples of these are very much rarer than black ones. All animals are liable to occasional variations of colour, which cannot be satisfactorily explained. In the leopard these variations occur more frequently than in most other animals, and the colour is nearly always black.