NOTES ON MAN-EATING TIGERS. 205 



suppose this was said to let us down easy, but the State head 

 shikari, Moti Singh, was terribly downcast about it, and I was 

 horridly depressed in spirits also. However, two days afterwards 

 we killed two tigers in one beat, and we got our good spirits back. 



A common theory appears prevalent that a wounded tiger often 

 turns man-eater, and lately in the columns of the Pioneer, I think, 

 reference has been made to certain cases of wounded tigers having 

 turned man-eaters in the Central Provinces. Wounded tiafers often 

 turn man-killers, but I have not obtained any evidence of their 

 turning man-eaters. The difference is very great, except, perhaps, to 

 the victim. A wounded tiger no doubt, until its wounds are healed, 

 attacks every person who comes near to it. It does this not for the 

 purpose of obtaining food, but because it is smarting under a 

 painful wound, and it believes that the person approaching it is 

 going to inflict another wound. Many instances can be quoted of 

 wounded tigers killing persons approaching them after they have 

 been wounded, and I need only mention the case of my friend the 

 late Mr. G. L. Gibson, a member of our Society, who died here from 

 wounds inflicted by a wounded tiger he was seeking foi*, and whilst he 

 was examining the body of a native boy which he found killed by this 

 wounded tiger. This is the chief danger of leaving a wounded 

 tiger, as one knows that the first person who unfortunately comes 

 near the place where the tiger may be lying down will undoubtedly 

 be killed, and many sportsmen therefore very properly prefer to 

 run considerable risk in killing a tiger they have wounded, rather 

 than allow it to live and kill the first innocent person who may be 

 so unfortunate as to come near it, Mr. Mulock writes me as follows, 

 viz., " My theory is that if one member of a tiger family takes to 

 "the man quarry tbey all lose their fear of the biped and kill him 

 " when hungry. I have found this in one or two instances. " I observe 

 also that Mr. Saunderson in his book scouts the idea of man-eaters 

 being mangy, and wonders how this idea became prevalent. 



To sum up then, I have no particular theories, with one exception, 

 to put before you as to man-eaters. The one theory I can advance 

 is that the man-eater inherits this vice from its parents, or that the 

 parent having previously learnt this vice from a parent or com- 

 panion, teaches the cub to kill human beings, and such cubs, when 

 grown up, teach the vice either to their own cubs or to their 

 mates, and so the practice never dies out amongst the tigers of that 

 district. In short I contend that, unlike the case of the poet, the 



