The Living Animals of the World, Volume I: Mammals
The Cat Tribe 43
Photo by Fratelli Alinart^ (Florence.
A TIGER BEFOBE SLEEPING.
Tigers, when about to sloep, sit in this position; whan more drowsy, they lie down or roll oyeron their backs.
selves we never see. The present writer was informed by a friend that in the Amur Valley he shot three of these tigers in a day, putting them up in thick bush-scrub by the aid of dogs. The EOYAL BENGAL TIGER, so called, and very properly called in the old. books of natural history, is a different and far more savage beast. It is almost invariably a ferocious savage, fierce by nature, never wishing to be otherwise than a destroyer of beasts mainly, it is far longer, but rather Lighter, for thebut often of men. Compared with the lion, lion is more massive and compact. " A well-grown tigress," says Sir Samuel Baker, " may ifweigh on an average 240 Ibs. live weight. A very fine tiger may weigh 440 Ibs., but Ibs. morefat the same tiger would weigh 500 Ibs. There may be tigers which weigh 50 than this; but I speak according to my experience. I have found that a tiger of 9 feet 8 inches is about 2 inches above the average. The same skin may be stretched is a long, lithe creature with littleto measure 10 feet. A tiger in the Zoological Gardens flesh. Such a specimen affords a poor example of this grand animal in its native jungle's, with muscles in their full, ponderous development from continual exertion in nightly well-fedtravels over long distances, and in mortal struggles when wrestling with its prey. A it is exceedingly bulky, broad intiger is by no means a slim figure. On the contrary, the shoulders, back, and loins, and with an extraordinary girth of limb^, especially in the forearms and wrists." This ponderous, active, and formidably armed creature is, as might be expected, able to hold its own wherever Europeans do not form part of the regular population. In India the peasants are quite helpless even against a cattle-killing tiger in a populous part of the country. In the large jungles, and on the islands at the mouths of the great rivers, the tigers have things
of the World44 The Living Animals all their own way. Things are no better in the Far East. A large peninsula near Singapore is said to have been almost abandoned by its cultivators lately, owing to the loss of life caused by the tigers. In the populous parts of India the tiger is far more stealthy than in the out-of-the-way districts. It only hunts by night; and after eating a part of the animal killed, moves off to a distance, and does not return. Otherwise the regular habit is to return to the kill just at or after dusk, and finish the remainder. Its suspicions seem quite lulled to sleep after dark. Quite recently a sportsman sat up to watch for a tiger at a water-hole. It was little water was left. All the creaturesin the height of the Indian hot season, when very of that particular neighbourhood were in the habit of coming to drink at one good pool still left in the rocky bed of the river. There the tigers came too. The first night they did not come until all the other creatures hog, deer, peacocks, and monkeys had been down to drink. They then came so softly over the sand that the gunner in waiting did not hear them pass. His first knowledge that they were there was due to the splashing they made as they entered the water. It was quite dark, and he felt not a little nervous, for the bush on which he was seated on a small platform was only some 10 feet high. He heard the two tigers pass him, not by their footsteps, but by the dripping of the water as it ran off their bodies on to the sand. Next night they came again. This time, though it was dark, he shot one in a very ingenious manner. The two tigers walked into the water, and apparently lay down or sat down in it, with their heads out. They only moved occasionally, lapping the water, but did not greatly disturb the surface. On this was reflected a bright star from flioto by Scholastic Pkoto. Co.] [Panon't Green. the sky above. The sports- A HALF-GROWN TIGER CUB. rifle man put the sight of theTigerg " grow to their head," like children. The head of a half-grown cub is as long, though not so broad, as that of tbe adult. on the star, and kept it up to his shoulder. Something obliterated the star, and he instantly fired. The "something" was the tiger's head, which the bullet duly hit. The hill-tigers of India are, or were, much more given to hunting by day than the jungle-tigers. In the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India the late General Douglas Hamilton said that before night the tigers were already about hunting, and that in the shade of evening it was dangerous to ride on a pony not because the tigers wished to kill the rider, but because they stalked like this more thanmight mistake the pony and its rider for a sambar deer. He was once. Often, when stalking sambar deer and ibex by day, he saw the tigers doing the same, or after other prey. "My brother Kichard," he writes, "was out after a tiger which the first gettinghillmen reported had killed a buffalo about an hour before. He saw the tiger on to the ground, and the tiger had seen him. It was lying out in the open watching the buffalo, and shuffled into the wood, and would not come out again. Next morning, when we got to the ground, the tiger was moving from rock to rock, and had dragged the body into a nullah.
... a number of vultures coming We were upon the point of starting home when we observed hill. Idown to the carcase. The vultures began to collect in large numbers on the opposite
[Florence. Photo by Fratelli Alinari]
TIGERS IX ITALY.
These tigers were photographed in Turin. Italy was the first European country to which these animals were brought from the East. 43
The Living Animals of the World
soon counted fifty; but they would not go near the buffalo. Then some crows, bolder than the rest, flew down, and made a great row over their meal. All of a sudden they all flew up, and I made certain it was the tiger. Then my brother fired, and there he was, shot right through the brain, lying just above the buffalo. He had been brought down by the noise the crows were making. Upon driving the skolas (small woods on these hills), tigers were often put out. Sometimes they availed themselves of the drive to secure food for themselves. A wood was being driven, when a tremendous grunting was heard, and out rushed an old boar, bristling and savage. B was about to raise his rifle, when a growl like thunder stopped him, and a great tiger with one spring cleared the nullah, and alighted on the back of the old boar. Such a battle then took place that, what with the growls of the tiger and the squeals of the boar, one might believe oneself in another world. I thought of nothing but of how to kill one or the other, or both; so, as they were rolling down over and over, BJI permission of Herr Carl Hagtnbtck] [Hamburg. about fifty yards from me on the open hill- A LEOPARD-PUMA HYBRID. side, I let fly both barrels. For a second or This is a photograph from life of a very rare hybrid. The animals' father was a puma, its mother a leopard. It is now dead, and may bttwo the noise went on; then the tiger jumped off, and the boar struggled into the nullah seen stuffed in Mr. Rothschild's Museum at Tring. close by. The tiger pulled up, and coolly stared at us without moving; but his courage seemed to fail him, and he sprang into the nullah and disappeared." In most parts of India tigers are now scarce and shy, except in the preserves of the great rajas, and the dominions of some mighty and pious Hindu potentates, such as the Maharaja of Jeypur, who, being supposed to be descended from a Hindu god, allows no wild animals to be killed. There the deer and pig are so numerous that tigers are welcome to keep them down. But the Sunderbunds, unwholesome islands at the Ganges mouth, still swarm with them. So does the Malay Peninsula. Mr. J. D. Cobbold shot a tiger in Central Asia in a swamp so deep in snow and so deadly cold that he dared not stay for fear of being frozen to death. Tigers sometimes wander as far west as the Caucasus near the Caspian. The farther north, the larger your tiger, is the rule. The biggest ever seen in Europe was
Photo by L. Mcdland, F.Z.S.] (North Finchley. a Siberian tiger owned by Herr Carl LEOPARDS. largest A pair of leopards, one spotted, the other black. Black leopards may be the Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, and the offspring of the ordinary spotted form: they are generally much more savage known skin and skull is from the Far
The Cat Tribe 47 North. The skin is 13 feet 6 inches from the nose to the end of the tail. The largest Indian tiger-skin, from one killed by the Maharaja of Cuch Eehar, measures 11 feet 7 inches.
LEOPARDS. LESS in size, but even more ferocious, the LEOPARD has a worse character than the tiger.' Living mainly in trees, and very nocturnal, this fierce and dangerous beast is less often seen than far rarer animals. It is widely spread over the world, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Atlas Mountains, and from Southern China to the Black Sea, where it is
' sometimes met with in the Caucasus. There seems to be no legend of its presence in Greece, Italy, or Spain; but it was quite common in Asia Minor; and Cicero, when governor of Cilicia, was plagued by an aristocratic young friend in Koine to send him leopards to exhibit in a fete he was giving.
Any one who has frequented the Zoo for any time must have noticed the difference in size and colour between leopards from different parts of the world. On some the ground-colour is almost white, in others a clear nut-brown. Others are jet-black. Wherever they live, they are cattle thieves, sheep thieves, and dog thieves. Though not formidable in appearance, they are immensely strong. Sometimes one will turn man-eater. Both in India and lately in Africa cases have been known where they have " set up " in this line as deliberately as any tiger. They have four or five young at a birth, which may often be kept tame for some time and are amusing pets. But the following plain story shows the danger of such experiments. At Hong-kong an English merchant had a tame leopard, which was brought into the room by a coolie for the guests to see at a dinner party. Excited by the smell of food, it refused to go out when one of the ladies, who did not like its looks, wished it out. It seizedfor it to be removed. The man took hold of its collar and began to haul him by the neck, bit it through, and in a minute the coolie was dying, covered with blood,