NOTES ON MAN-EATING TIGERS. l!)7 



eight human beings, but these must be taken as much less than the 

 correct actual number, because my informants only return what the 

 railway officials hear of and confirm, and these returns are mostly of 

 peorjle connected with the railway. In 1880, up to June, she has killed 

 seven people besides wounding others. The district she works in is 

 as I have said about nine square miles only, and is near the Darckasa 

 Railway Station. She appears to live in a rocky and precipitous spur, 

 through which a tunnel has been cut. This spur carries heavy bamboo 

 and other jungle. Several springs of water rise from out of the 

 spur. In many places at the foot of the scarps there are delightfully 

 cool places for her to lie up in, where the ground is always moist. 

 There is also a cave in a detached mass of the spur, which shows 

 many signs of being used by the tigress and the family. A big 

 stone just outside the entrance is scored deep and long with many 

 scratches of their claws. The jungle around the cave is very thick, 

 and the cave is very awkward to get at. "The whole area hunted 

 by the tigress," writes Mr. Anderson, "is hard to determine, but for 

 weeks together it is believed she has hunted within this area of 

 nine square miles or even less." A great number of sportsmen (in fact 

 too many) have been after her without success. She will not return 

 to a kill ; if she cannot carry off a carcase to a safe place, she 

 will abandon it altogether. About the middle of January last she 

 began to frequent the railway, being seen at all hours in broad 

 daylight. On 24th February 1889, at 2-20 p.m., she jumped from 

 the top of the slope of a cutting about twelve feet on to the line, 

 where a gang of permanent-way men was at work, snatched up 

 one of them and vanished up the opposite slope in a second. She 

 carried the body to a pool of water about 300 yards off and there 

 ate it. On the 25th February a beat was organised, and three tigers 

 were found at home, in the cave, of which two were shot by 

 Mr. Cleveland and Captain Silver, Adjutant of the B.-N. Railway 

 Volunteers, both of which tigers were young ones, not fully grown, 

 the cubs of the old sinner. On the 29th February, she killed a boy 

 near the same place and carried his body a long way. Mr. Anderson 

 has seen the pugs of a young cub with her, apparently one of her 

 last litter. The cubs that were killed are probably of another 

 former litter. On the 4th March, the tigress attacked a woodcutter 

 near the railway, but was driven off pluckily by his companion, who 

 attacked her with an axe. All April she appears to have kept to 

 the same ground, and in the middle of May she killed another man 



