9 o NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb., 



mousedeer, but it has also been seen in the mud of a mangrove 

 swamp digging up and devouring shell-fish. 



When hungry the tigers are very bold ; thus, on one occasion, a 

 tiger invaded the house of a European near Singapore in the night and 

 stole a joint of beef which was in the kitchen. One night a tiger 

 entered the open door of a Chinese hut on the edge of the jungle in 

 Pulau Ubin, and walking through the ashes of the fire (where I saw 

 its footmarks), broke through the lattice-work wall of the house and 

 went away, to the relief of the Chinaman. The following night four 

 tigers walked up the steps of another house close by, apparently in 

 search of the owner or his dog ; by breaking through the back of 

 the house the inhabitants managed to escape, leaving the house to 

 the tigers. 



The tigers are usually quite harmless to human beings, but now 

 and again take them. Wallace mentions that in his time a man a 

 day was killed in Singapore. This is easily credible, the forests were 

 then being cut down, and many Chinese were employed in this work, 

 and being scattered over the jungle, were doubtless easily taken. In 

 Singapore of late, till the last two years, the average was one native 

 every two months. The number of deaths from tigers given by 

 Wallace and Jagor has been ridiculed as improbable by some 

 writers, who appear to have derived their information from the 

 Police Reports, ignorant of the fact that many such deaths do not 

 get reported to the police for the following reason. The chief people 

 killed are the Chinese gambir- and pepper-coolies. Now, on a Chinese 

 plantation, coolies are not allowed to talk of tigers, for fear of 

 frightening each other. Even if a tiger is seen, a coolie is not 

 allowed to mention it, and, if a man is killed, he is buried quietly 

 and a false return of death given if possible. This is done to prevent 

 the coolies from being frightened and leaving the plantation. 



The two popular fallacies still to be found in some Natural 

 History books, that a tiger when once he has attacked and eaten man 

 becomes a man-eater and that it is only very aged and toothless 

 tigers which devour men, have elsewhere been shown to be false. 

 Sometimes one or a couple of tigers will take to man-eating regularly, 

 but this is not common here, and has never happened as far as I 

 know in Singapore, while those which have done so and have 

 afterwards been shot have usually been found to be fine young beasts. 

 The Malays often talk of the " Rimau Kramat," a sacred tiger, 

 which is stated to be a very old hairless and toothless tiger, perfectly 

 harmless and quiet. I have been shown footprints of very large 

 animals said to be " Rimau Kramat." 



As has been said, it is usually Chinese coolies who are taken 

 by tigers. Working early and late in the gambir-fields, their bare 

 brown skins are sometimes mistaken by the tiger for those of the deer 

 which often come in the dusk or at dawn to browse on the gambir 

 shoots. Rushing on the unsuspecting coolie from the long grass 



