XIV BUFFALO AND SOME REGRETS 165 



ing, proceeding apparently from beyond the one 

 accursed clump of leaves I had not cut. 



At last the tigress spotted me. She gave 

 two loud roars ; I heard her gallop off, and then 

 there was silence. 



And so I lost this man-eater. She and her 

 cub had killed ; she had dragged the heavy 

 buried beam, and had been sheltered by the only 

 leaves that could have hidden her from view. I 

 grieved much at my own stupidity, and more at 

 the toll of human lives this probably entailed. 

 We waited two days, but the man-eater and her 

 cub had evidently left that neighbourhood. 



Major-General Nigel Woody att, in his interest- 

 ing book, My Sporting Memories, discusses fully 

 the question of how a tiger kills his prey. 



I add my own views with diffidence to the 

 expert opinion recorded. My experience is com- 

 paratively small, yet, for such as it is worth, 

 my opinion is that in the majority of cases the 

 tiger kills by seizing his prey by the nape of the 

 neck or by the throat with his jaws, hooking 

 the claws of one paw round the far side of the 

 animal's nose and jerking it towards him, thus 

 dislocating the neck, while his other paw clasps 

 the withers. The bite on the neck is deep, but 

 not the primary cause of death. 



The bites on the throat may be found as well as 

 those at the back of the neck, and are, I believe, 

 often inflicted after death. They may or may 

 not be combined with blood-drinking. 



I believe that kills, by seizing the throat alone, 

 or by gripping the withers and biting the nape 

 of the neck, occur when the attack which I 



