470 nVllMA, ITS PEOPLE AXD PRODLX'TIOXS. 



Head ami body 1.3 ; tail 10 or II imhcs. 



Jerdon says this species ran.^cs through Assam, Buniui and tlie ^falay countries, 

 though Blyth would soom never to have received specimens. 



H. AUBOPUXCTATUS, Hodg. 



Colour olive-brown, with a golden tint due to the yellow annidation of the fur. 

 The sides are paler, and the under parts dirtv yellowish-white. 



Length— Head and body 12-70; tail 10'25 = '22-9o inches. 



Inhabits Bengal and ranges to the Punjab on one hand, and Assam, Upper Burma 

 (Bhamo), and JIalaj-an Peninsula on the other. 



Familij Felicl88. 

 Dentition, 1. %; C. .|; P.M. ; ; M. f. 



Felis, Linnaws. 



Five toes before, foiir behind. Claws retractile. Habits nocturnal. Some 

 species are easily domesticated, though somewhat uncertain and dangerous playmates, 

 being all of them highly sanguinary, and the most perfect type of raptorial carnivora. 



F. Tiraus, L. 



The Tiger. Kya. 



Colour bright fawn, more or less rufous in hue, with dark stripes. The average 

 size (says Jerdon) of a full-grown mde tiger is from 9 to 9V feet iu length ; l)ut 

 occasionally one may reach to a few inches over 10 feet. These measurements, of 

 course, are taken over the body, as the skin, after it is removed, may be stretched a 

 foot or two more. 



Tigers, as a rule, kill their own prey ; but rather than die of starvation, they 

 will condescend to carrion. Jerdon relates a case of a tigress and two cubs devouring 

 a buffalo which had died of disease, and the still more remarkable fact of a tiger 

 removing the body of a tigress which had been shot, before the pad elephant, which 

 had been sent to bring in her body, arrived, and devouring half of tlie body. Tliis 

 was related by a celebrated sportsman in Khaiideish, and was probably the result of 

 the starving condition of the animal. Dr. Mason remarks, " No animal seems to be 

 more universally diffused than the Royal Tiger. While other animals vary in species 

 over a large extent of country, the tiger seems the same from the Indus to the Menam, 

 and from Malacca to the Himalayas. In travelling we come on their tracks ever and 

 anon, but till tigers have by some peradventure tasted human blood, tliey do not 

 appear to attack man, but confine themselves to his dogs, hogs, goats or ponies. They 

 do not habitually come within a fence, but a fence is no obstacle to a hungry tiger. 

 I stopped one evening in the school-house of a large Bghai village, which was sur- 

 rounded by a high bamboo fence, with no entry into the inclosure but by a small 

 gateway. I had a stout Shan pony witli mc, tied up under the room (all houses iu 

 Burma being raised five or six feet from the ground) where I was sitting and writing, 

 about eight o'clock in the evening. Suddenly there was an agonizing snort from the 

 pony, followed by a loud crash of the fence close by, and nothing more was heard. 

 In tlie morning the half-eaten body of the pony was found at the foot of the hill half 

 a mile distant. It is noteworthy tliat at the time the tiger carried off the pony, my 

 cook was boiling the kettle for tea just outside the gateway, not more than two or 

 three yards from the entrance, where the tiger must have passed in." Dr. Mason 

 goes on to add that this tiger was wounded and probably killed the next night by a 

 gun set with a spring close to the carcase of the pony. "It is sometimes said a tiger 

 will not attack an elephant; but one of our Karen Christians, engaged in the timber- 

 trade in 1871, turned his elephant out to feed at evening near the foot of the moun- 

 tain on which Baugalay stanils, and he found it next morning mortally wounded by a 

 tiger. Its back and rump were dreadfully bitten up, and it was supposed that the 

 tiger had came upon it, wliihi laid down and aslei^p, for tigers do not often atta<'k 

 elephants." In explanation of the above remarkable case, it may be suggested that 



