Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 3

As the lion rampant is the normal lion, so the normal leopard is the leopard passant, the adjective being needless. In a few cases only the leopard rises up to ramp in the lion's fashion, and here he must be blazoned without fail as a leopard rampant.

Parts of the lion and the leopard are common charges. Chief of these are the demi-lion and the demi-leopard, beasts complete above their slender middles, even to the upper parts of their lashing tails. Rampant or passant, they follow the customs of the unmaimed brute. Also the heads of lion and leopard are in many shields, and here the armorist of the modern handbooks stumbles by reason of his refusal to regard clearly marked medieval distinctions. The instructed will know a lion's head because it shows but half the face and a leopard's head because it is seen full-face. But the handbooks of heraldry, knowing naught of leopards, must judge by absence or presence of a mane, speaking uncertainly of leopards' faces and lions' heads and faces. Here again the old path is the straighter. The head of a lion, or indeed of any beast, bird or monster, is generally painted as "razed," or torn away with a ragged edge which is pleasantly conventionalized. Less often it is found "couped" or cut off with a sheer line. But the leopard's head is neither razed nor couped, for no neck is shown below it. Likewise the lion's fore leg or paw--"gamb" is the book word--may be borne, razed or coupled. Its normal position is raided upright, although Newdegate seems to have borne "Gules three lions' legs razed silver, the paws downward." With the strange bearing of the lion's whip-like tail cut off at the rump, we may end the list of these oddments.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 3 — Part 200