THE ANIMAL VIEW OF MAN. 259 



is perhaps not so far removed from that of the non-carnivorous 

 creatures as might be supposed. Man is certainly not the natural 

 food of any animal except of sharks and alligators, if he is so 

 rash as to go out of his native element into theirs and if the item 

 " man " were subtracted from the bill of fare of all the carnivora, 

 they would never want a meal. The notion of the natural atti- 

 tude of a lion to a young lady 



" When as that tender virgin he did spye, 

 Upon her he did run full greedily, 

 To have at once devoured her tender corse," 



is still popular, but hardly correct. More probably the lion would 

 get out of the way politely if we may judge by the pacific be- 

 havior of those in our last-explored lion-haunt, Mashonaland. M. 

 Georges Leroy's contention for the natural affinity, or semi-sym- 

 pathy, which should exist between man and the intelligent hunt- 

 ing animals is no doubt partly reasonable. Leigh Hunt was 

 unpleasantly struck by the incongruity of the notion of being 

 eaten by a wild beast " the hideous impracticable fellow-creature, 

 looking one in the face, struggling with us, mingling his breath 

 with ours, tearing away scalp or shoulder-blade." But the " fel- 

 low-creature " is not nearly so impracticable as he is supposed to 

 be. More human beings are probably killed by tigers than by 

 any other wild beast, except by starving wolves. Yet this is what 

 Sir Samuel Baker has to say on the subject : " There is a great 

 difference in the habits of tigers. Some exist upon the game in 

 the jungles. Others prey especially upon the flocks belonging to 

 the villagers. A few are designated ' man-eaters/ These are 

 sometimes naturally ferocious, and having attacked a human be- 

 ing, may have devoured the body, and thus acquired a taste for 

 human flesh ; or they may have been wounded on more than one 

 occasion, and have learned to regard man as a natural enemy. But 

 more frequently the * man-eater ' is a very old tiger, or more prob- 

 ably tigress, that, having hunted in the neighborhood of villages 

 and carried off some unfortunate woman, has discovered that it is 

 far easier to kill a native than to hunt jungle game." As a rule, 

 the tiger is only anxious to avoid men ; and it is noticed that in 

 high grass tigers are more dangerous than in forests, because in 

 the former they can not be seen, neither can they see, until the 

 stranger is close upon them. An ancient instance of the opposite 

 behavior is that recorded of the new colonists of Samaria, whom 

 the lions attacked, and " slew some of them." A curious inver- 

 sion of this experience occurred when the islands in the Brah- 

 maputra, which were swarming with tigers, were first cultivated. 

 The natives, mainly by the aid of traps set with a bow and arrow, 

 killed off the tigers so fast that the skins were sold by auction at 



