70 Lloyd's natural history. 



a man who informed us that a woman had been killed ; we 

 hurried on, and in a hollow, below a clump of bamboos, 

 came upon the body of the poor woman, over which her niece 

 was crying b'tterly. The back of the skull was completely 

 smashed, and part of the scalp torn off. The woman had 

 been sitting in the low veranda of a ground-hut, making thatch, 

 and had evidently been whisked off by one fell swoop of the 

 Tiger's paw, for no maiks of the teeth could be discovered. 

 A number of people were seated close beside her, talking 

 loudly ; but this only verifies wl at I have heard about the 

 boldness of man eating Tigers, that they rather take advantage 

 than otherwise of a noise to secure their prey ; and this one, a 

 Tigress, had a decided partiality for human flesh, for she had 

 carried off another woman a year before, when the townspeople 

 attested that she cleared the stockade, nine feet high, with 

 the woman in her mouth. In the present instance she had 

 dragged her prey about fifty yards, but whenever the people 

 discovered what had happened, they rushed from their houses 

 with torches, and, shouting, drove her off. When we arrived, 

 there were fifty men, all armed with spears and guns, and 

 many carried torches, while fires had been lit in every 

 direction, to frighten the brute away. The scene was a most 

 exciting and effective picture ; we had the body removed, and 

 beat the thickets, but could discover no trace of the Tigress. 

 The woman was buried the same night, in accordance with 

 the Burmese custom, followed in all cases of persons killed by 

 Tigers. On the following morning we found the tracks of the 

 animal clearly imprinted on fresh bricks laid out to dry, and 

 its sex indicated by the footprints of her cub." 



In spite of our having declared the preceding anecdote of 

 Tigers to be the last, we cannot resist quoting a telegram sent 

 some years ago by the Bengali station-master of a small up- 

 country railway station in India, where a Tiger had taken pos- 



