THE TIGER 389 



the efforts of the European sportsman to encompass its destruction ; while there are 

 districts where one of these pests may continue its depredations for a long period 

 without coming under the notice of Europeans. The destruction of human life by 

 tigers, most of which are probably habitual man-eaters, is, indeed, still deplorably 

 large, especially in the more thinly-populated districts. According to the Govern- 

 ment returns, it appears that within a period of six years no less than 4,218 natives 

 fell victims to tigers, while in the Central Provinces alone 285 were killed during 

 the years 1868 and 1869. In regard to the ravages committed by individual man- 

 eaters, a gentleman, writing from Nayadunka to Sir J. Fayrer, states that "one 

 tiger in 1867, 1868, 1869, killed respectively twenty-seven, thirty-four, and forty- 

 seven people. I have known it to attack a party, and kill four or five at a time. 

 Once it killed a father, mother, and three children ; and the week before it was 

 shot it killed seven people. It wandered over a tract of twenty miles, never remain- 

 ing in the same spot two consecutive days, and was at last killed by a bullet from a 

 spring gun when returning to feed on the body of one of its victims. ' ' It will be 

 observed that the concluding sentence of this account does not bear out Sir Samuel 

 Baker's statement that the man-eater never revisits its " kill." The account of the 

 depredations of another man-eater, which infested the neighborhood of the station 

 of Naini-Tal in the Eastern Himalayas, states that the animal "prowled about 

 within a circle, say of twenty miles, and that it killed on an average about eighty 

 men per annum." 



In order to rid themselves of these pests, the natives of India and other 

 countries have had recourse to all kinds of traps and other devices. Among these, 

 pitfalls used to be a favorite method. According to Mr. Wallace, in Sumatra, these 

 pits are made in the form of an iron furnace, wider at the bottom than at the top, 

 and from about fifteen to twenty feet in depth ; a sharpened stake being fixed at the 

 bottom. The top of the pit is then covered over with branches and leaves, and so 

 perfect is the concealment, that Mr. Wallace states that he has more than once had 

 a narrow escape from falling into these pits. Indeed, one unfortunate traveler was 

 killed by a fall on to the sharpened stake, after which that portion of the contriv- 

 ance was forbidden. Large mouse-trap cages for catching tigers alive were formerly 

 sometimes used in certain parts of India ; but Mr. Blanford states that these were 

 more successful in catching leopards than tigers. Poisoning the ' ' kill " of a tiger 

 is also a method that has been more or less successful ; while bows with poisoned 

 arrows and spring guns set in the tiger's path have also been called into requisition. 

 In certain parts of the Mysore district Mr. Sanderson states that the villagers are in 

 the habit of surrounding tigers with nets, and then spearing or shooting them ; this, 

 except watching, being the only means by which they can be killed in covert which is 

 too dense to admit of driving. In Orissa, on the upper part of the Eastern Coast of 

 India, and perhaps elsewhere, the natives, according to Mr. Blanford, construct a 

 gigantic figure-4 trap loaded with a platform of heavy stones, that falls upon and 

 crushes the tiger, after the manner of the brick or tile trap used by gardeners in this 

 country to kill field mice. In some of the older works relating to the tiger there 

 will be found circumstantial accounts of a method of capturing the animal by 

 smearing leaves with bird-lime which adheres to its face and paws, and thus 



