92 EXTIRPATION OF WILD QUADRUPEDS. 



the most discreditable pages in modern literature. It is true 

 that in India and other tropical countries the number and ferocity 

 of the wild beasts not only justify but command a war of exter* 

 mination against them, but the indiscriminate slaughter of many 

 quadrupeds which are favorite objects of the chase can urge no 

 such apology. Late official reports from India state the number 

 of human victims of the tiger, the leopard, the wolf, and other 

 beasts of prey, in ten " districts," at more than twelve thousand 

 within three years, and we are informed on like authority that 

 within the last six years more than ten thousand men, women 

 and children have perished in the same way in the Presidency of 

 Bengal alone. One tiger, we are told, had killed more than a 

 hundred people, and finally stopped the travel on an important 

 road, and another had caused the desertion of thirteen villages 

 and thrown 250 square miles out of cultivation. In such facts 

 we find abundant justification of the slaying of seven thousand 

 tigers, nearly six thousand leopards, and twenty-five hundred 

 other ravenous beasts in the Bengal Presidency, in the space of 

 half a dozen years. But the humane reader will not think the 

 value of the flesh, the skin, and other less important products of 

 inoffensive quadrupeds, a satisfactory excuse for the ravages com- 

 mitted upon them by amateur sportsmen as well as by professional 

 hunters. In 1861, it was computed that the annual supply of the 

 English market with ivory cost the Hves of 8,000 elephants. Others 

 make the number much larger, and it is said that haK as much ivory 

 is consumed in the United States as in Great Britain. In Ceylon, 

 where the elephants are numerous and destructive to the crops 

 as well as dangerous to travellers, while their tusks are small and 

 of comparatively little value, the government pays a small reward 

 for killing them. According to Sir Emerson Tennant,* in three 

 years prior to 1848, the premium was paid for 3,500 elephants in 

 a part of the northern district, and between 1851 and 1856 for 

 2,000 in the southern district. Major Bogers, famous as an ele- 

 phant shooter in Ceylon, ceased to count his victims after he had 

 slain 1,300, and Cumming in South Africa sacrificed his heca^ 

 tombs every month. 



In spite of the rarity of the chamois, his cautious shyness, and 



* Natural History of Ceylon, chap. iv. 



