96 



FELID^. 



So dire was the destruction that Major Erskine, the Commissioner, applied 

 to the Madras Government to furnish an officer for the special work of 

 thinning these cannibals. In the Bustar country, sovith-east of Nagpore, 

 when I traversed part of that then imexplored district, I found that in 

 several parts the villages were deserted, entirely, as I was informed, from 

 the ravages of tigers, although, in some instances, the villages had been 

 surrounded by a high stockade. In the Bengal Sunderbuns too many 

 wood-cutters are (or used to be) annually carried off. 



Tiger hunting is generally done from elephants in Northern India ; and 

 a well-trained shikaree elephant will stand the charge of a tiger well, 

 occasionally even rushing to meet it, which is by no means agreeable 

 to the sportsman in the howdah. In Southern India, where there are 

 but few elephants kept, the Tiger is often successfully slain on foot ; but 

 it is at all times a dangerous sport, and many serious and fatal accidents 

 ai"e well known to have occurred. Occasionally a tiger is shot by night 

 from a platform on a tree, either close to where the tiger has killed, but 

 not eaten all his prey, or, with a fresh bullock picketed near. In the 

 Wynaad one class of Hindoos assemble in large numbers, and forming a 

 large circle, drive the Tiger into a net, where it is speared. Various mode?, 

 of capture are practised all over India, and strychnine has been had re- 

 sort to occasionally to destroy this animal ; but in spite of the numbers 

 killed annually by sportsmen, and by native shikarees for the sake of 

 the Government reward, in many districts its numbers appear to be only 

 slightly diminished. 



The native idea about the Tiger getting an additional lobe to its liver 

 every year has been fully taken up by English sportsmen, and in the pages 

 of the Bengal Sporting Magazine, &c., the number of lobes in the livers 

 of tigers whose death is there chronicled, are duly recorded. The clavicle 

 lies loosely imbedded among the muscles near the shoulder-joint, and is 

 considered of great vii'tue by natives. The whiskers are, in some parts of 

 Southern India, considered to endow the fortunate possessor with unlimited 

 power over the opposite sex. The claws are mounted in silver and made 

 into bracelets. 



The Tiger is peculiar to Asia, extending as far west as Georgia, through 

 Persia to Bokhara, and is also found in Amurland, in the Altai region, 

 and China ; thence extending south through Burmah to the IMalayan 

 peninsula, and some of the neighbouring larger islands. It is not found 

 in Ceylon. 



