58 LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 
means of escape offers from real or imaginary danger, they 
have occasionally been known to do so. They have also been 
seen to clamber up or even spring to a certain height, where 
they have seen a man, and whence they thought the shot came, 
and pull him down. I have heard of authentic instances 
where this happened. Nor are they wont to spring to any 
great height from the ground; though an instance occurred 
recently, reported by an eye-witness, where a Tiger pulled a 
native, in one spring, out of a tree at a height of eighteen feet 
from the ground. The Tiger’s usual attack is a rush accom- 
panied by a series of short deep growls or roars, in which he 
evidently thinks he will do much by intimidation. When he 
charges home, he rises on the hind-feet, seizes with the teeth 
and claws, endeavouring, and often succeeding, in pulling down 
the object seized. Tigers do occasionally leave the ground 
with a spring, clear a fence or ditch, or even alight on the 
Elephant’s head, his pad, or hind-quarters ; but this probably 
happens in the case of Tigresses or young and active males. 
The heavy o!d Tiger seldom, if ever, is so energetic in spring- 
ing up heights ; though he will take a good broad ditch or wall 
in a bound.” 
As an instance of the enormous muscular power of the ‘Tiger, 
the same writer goes on to say that on one occasion one of 
these animals sprang from an elevation at a single bound 
among a herd of cattle, striking down simultaneously on each 
side a Cow with his fore-paws. Both Cows were disabled, but 
whereas the Tiger proceeded to kill and devour the one, the 
other was left lying with her back broken. 
In many districts in India, Tigers were (and in some in- 
stances still are) extraordinarily numerous and audacious, and 
the following account by an anonymous author, taken, with 
some verbal alteration, from the Aszax newspaper of August 
3rd, 1894, of their habits and vagaries in the Cherrapunji 
