In the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. ’Member it wasn’t the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the exclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and exclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were exclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the exclusivest sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all—a grayish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the exclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the High Veldt to one hair. This was very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest of them; for he would lie down by a exclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish stone or clump of grass, and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland or the Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bontebok came by he would surprise them out of their lives. He would indeed! And, also, there was an Ethiopian with bows and arrows (a exclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish man he was then), who lived on the High Veldt with the Leopard; and the two used to hunt together—the Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and the Leopard exclusively with his teeth and claws—till the Giraffe and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga and all the rest of them didn’t know which way to jump, Best Beloved. They didn’t indeed!
——from How the Leopard Got His Spots by J. R. Kipling

亲爱的孩子们，在所有的动物颜色都一样的日子里，豹子生活在一个叫高地草原的地方，记得那不是低地草原，也不是未开垦的草原，更不是酸味十足的草原，而是绝对裸露、炎热、阳光充足的高地草原。那里遍布砂砾，还有黄棕色的岩石，点缀着几绺沙黄色的野草。长颈鹿、斑马、大羚羊、纰角鹿都生活在那里。他们全身都是沙色般的棕黄色，豹子是其中最为沙黄色的一种略带灰色的猫科动物，每一根毛都是清一色的沙黄灰褐色，如同草原的颜色一般。对于长颈鹿、斑马和其它动物来说，这可是糟透了。它会躺在一块黄里带灰的棕色石头旁边或是草丛里，当长颈鹿、斑马、大羚羊、纰角鹿、丛林里的兔子、白纹大羚羊经过的时候，突然跃起，吃掉它们。它可真会那么做的。带着弓箭的，与豹子一同生活在高地草原上的埃塞俄比亚人（同样也是灰棕黄色的），常常与豹子一起在草原上狩猎：埃塞俄比亚人用弓箭，豹子则用它的锋牙利爪，直到长颈鹿、大羚羊、纰角鹿、斑驴和所有其它的动物无处可逃。亲爱的孩子们，它们的确是无路可逃。
摘自《豹子身上的斑点如何来的》——J.R 吉卜林