196 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



of sport are ■written to be read by the masses, and the first idea of the 

 author is to romance and to write something of an exciting land to 

 please his readers, and not a strictly accurate account of what the 

 author has himself witnessed or known. These books of sport have 

 therefore little value from a Natural History point of view. I only 

 mention this, because my own opinion is that the general impression 

 about man-eaters is altogether wrong, except as to his display of 

 cunning. I am aware that one swallow does not make a summer, and 

 that many of my hearers may rightly think my opinion on this subject 

 is of little value. Man-eaters are happily so few and far between that 

 the most experienced shikary can in a lifetime only come across a 

 very few. I start then by saying that I believe man-eaters are not 

 different in any way from the ordinary game or bullock-eating tiger, 

 and that age, deformity, injury or otherwise, have nothing whatever 

 to do with the question. Why a tiger turns man-eater I can offer 

 no opinion, and why a tiger never kills a goat, but nevertheless 

 kills such small fry as peacocks, porcupine, or monkeys I also can- 

 not reply to. The universal fear that all animals have to man is 

 no doubt the reason why the tiger seldom happily does turn man- 

 eater. There are some large districts in India infested with tigers 

 where a man-eater is never heard of, whilst there are other smaller 

 districts, one of which I intend hereafter to refer to, where man- 

 eaters are constantly appearing. I wrote to a friend of mine, a 

 Forest Officer in the Berars, who is a very successful and keen tiger- 

 slayer, and who, I thought, could give me some very important 

 information. He however tells me that he has not known a single 

 case of a man-eating tiger, although however he has known of a 

 man-eating panther in his districts in the Berars. 



The first man-eater I wish to introduce you to is the tiger we 

 have often read of in our local newspapers as the Nagpore man-eater. 

 As regards this, one, I have obtained my information from 

 Messrs. George Anderson and George Moule, Engineers on the 

 Bengal-Nagpur Railway, who have been out on several occasions 

 after the beast, and have reliable means of obtaining accurate 

 information. This man-eater is a tigress, and has the following 

 peculiarities of character, viz., her love of feasting on the employes 

 of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, of frequenting only a small tract of 

 country, about nine square miles in area, and her great cunning and 

 audacity. She has been killing for three successive years ; as far as 

 my informants know, she has killed from twenty-eight to thirty- 



