96 MAMMALS. 



but it does not extend into Cej'lon, although Humboldt, probably per liiciiriam, speaks of it as found 

 there.* It inhabits the Malayan Peninsula, Smnatra, Java, and Bali, but is not met with in 

 Borneo-t Although thus found on every side of the high Thibetan region of Central Asia, it does 

 not penetrate into it ; but occasionally it visits its margin, speedily retreating, however, into the 

 warmer wooded valleys and ravines by which it came. The Rev. Mr. Everest J says that he met 

 with the tracks of the Tiger on the snow near his house, above the valley of the Dehra Boon in the 

 Himmalaj^ahs, 6800 feet above the sea, and whilst shooting in the oak forest around it, had one of his 

 people carried away by one. 



The few comparisons- which have been made between the individuals from different parts of 

 this vast area show considerable differences, but like those of the lions, rather of the nature of 

 climatal variation than specific characters. Herr Radde§ informs us that the Amourian individuals 

 are paler in colour, having more white on the under part of the body, and less red above ; 

 and he has compared skulls of examples from the Amour, from India, and from the Caucasus, 

 and found those of the Indian animals considerably larger than the others, and the Caucasian 

 specimen (he had onlj^ one) remarkable for the small size of its upper canines. There is no 

 doubt, however, that the species attains its greatest size, beauty, and ferocity, — in other words, is 

 m.ost highly developed, in the East Indian region. Blyth saj-s, that he has reason to believe that 

 the stature of the largest tigers considerably exceeds that of the largest lions. An experienced 

 lion-hunter in South Africa assured \m\\ that he never saw a lion-skull a^jproaching in magnitude 

 to the largest tiger-sludls in the Asiatic Society's Museum at Calcutta. || 



The absence of the Tiger in Ceylon may be due to one class of causes ; its absence in Borneo 

 to another ; probabl)^ some cause specially applicable to that island. We shall find, as we go along, 

 that these are not the only large animals which make Borneo remarkable by their absence. 

 A greater interval no doubt exists between it and the nearest land than between the other 

 islands where they are found, but scarcely sufficient to account for the difference, especially if we 

 suppose, as can hardly be doubted, that Borneo, as well as Java and Sumatra, was united to the 

 mainland at a time subsequent to the appearance of these animals, and that it was before the 

 separation of Java and Sumatra from the continent, that they became domiciled in them. This 

 separation there is every reason to believe was a comparatively recent event. The geological 

 events affecting Borneo must have been of the same date as those of Java and Sumatra, and these 

 islands possess the animals which are absent in Borneo. 



The cause of their absence from Borneo is perhaps to be sought for in some peculiarity in the 

 condition of that island when the land sunk so as to separate it from the mainland. 



If we imagine the island to have sunk so much as to have become an impassable morass, 

 covered with an impenetrable thicket of trees growing in the mud, such as is to be seen now on 

 some parts of the coast of New Guinea, it woidd perhaps explain the absence of large animals. 



* Humboldt, " Asie C'entralc," i. 340 ; edit. 1843. formerly there were a few tigers on the North-east coast, 



t "At one place two rocks were pointed oyit to me in probably let loose by stranger.s, as the ancestors of the 



the stream, about thirty feet apart, called the Tiger's Leap. elephants were." — St. John's Life in the Forests of the 



I made many inquiries about these animals. They insist Far East, ii. 115. 



that eight came to their country, — that they were not J Everfst, in "Annals of Natural History," vol. viii. 



tiger cats as I had suggested. If such animals were ever p. 327. 1842. 



here, they might have escaped from cages in the capital, as § Gustav Radde, "Reisen im Suden Von Ost Sibcricn 



it was a common custom among the far Eastern Princes to in den Jahren 1853-59." St. Petersburg, 1862. 



keep these ferocious creatures, though I never heard of || Eltth, op. cit., p. 55. 



Bornean princes doing so. I have read somcvvlierc that 



