Henry II’s panther, like the 1183 signet ring, tells us little or nothing of the arms of England. As the heraldic authorities have not been slow to point out, there was a clear distinction drawn by medieval writers between panthers and leopards.⁹¹ Isidore of Seville, for example, inserts a long digression on the panther, for the most part derived from Pliny, praising its speed but also commenting on the violence of its conception, the female capable of giving birth to only a single litter, because the cubs so clawed at her womb.⁹² The leopard, by contrast, was believed to be a hybrid animal, the product of breeding between a pard and a lion, likened by Isidore to the degenerate mule or ass.⁹³ Neither animal would have rivalled the lion, the king of beasts, as an appropriate symbol of royal majesty.