44 



THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 



have been almost abandoned by its cultivators lately, owing to the loss of life caused by the 

 tigers. In the populous parts of India the tiger is far more stealthy than in the out-of-the-way 

 districts. It only hunts by night ; and after eating a part of the animal killed, moves off to a 

 distance, and does not return. Otherwise the regular habit is to return to the kill just at or after 

 dusk, and finish the remainder. Its suspicions seem quite lulled to sleep after dark. Quite 

 recently a sportsman sat up to watch for a tiger at a water-hole. It was in the height of the 

 Indian hot season, when very little water was left. All the creatures of that particular neigh- 

 bourhood were in the habit of coming to drink at one good pool still left in the rocky bed of the 

 river. There the tigers came too. The first night they did not come until all the other creatures 

 hog, deer, peacocks, and monkeys had been down to drink. They then came so softly over 

 the sand that the gunner in waiting did not hear them pass. His first knowledge that they were 

 there was due to the splashing they made as they entered the water. It was quite dark, and he 

 felt not a little nervous, for the bush on which he was seated on a small platform was only some 

 10 feet high. He heard the two tigers pass him, not by their footsteps, but by the dripping of 



the water as it ran off their 

 bodies on to the sand. Next 

 night they came again. This 

 time, though it was dark, he 

 shot one in a very ingenious 

 manner. The two tigers 

 walked into the water, and 

 apparently lay down or sat 

 down in it, with their heads 

 out. They only moved occa- 

 sionally, lapping the water, 

 but did not greatly disturb 

 the surface. On this was re- 

 flected a bright star from the 

 sky above. The sportsman 

 put the sight of the rifle on 

 the star, and kept it up to his 

 shoulder. Something obliter- 

 ated the star, and he instantly 

 fired. The " something " was 

 the tiger's head, which the 

 bullet duly hit. 



The hill-tigers of India are, or were, much more given to hunting by day than the jungle- 

 tigers. In the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India the late General Douglas Hamilton said that before 

 night the tigers were already about hunting, and that in the shade of evening it was dangerous 

 to ride on a pony not because the tigers wished to kill the rider, but because they might mis- 

 take the pony and its rider for a sambar deer. He was stalked like this more than once. Often, 

 when stalking sambar deer and ibex by day, he saw the tigers doing the same, or after other 

 prey. "My brother Richard," he writes, " was out after a tiger which the hillmen reported had 

 killed a buffalo about an hour before. He saw the tiger on first getting to the ground, and the 

 tiger had seen him. It was lying out in the open watching the buffalo, and shuffled into the 

 wood, and would not come out again. Next morning, when we got to the ground, the tiger 

 was moving from rock to rock, and had dragged the body into a nullah. . . . We were upon 

 the point of starting home when we observed a number of vultures coming down to the carcase. 

 The vultures began to collect in large numbers on the opposite hill. I soon counted fifty ; but 

 they would not go near the buffalo. Then some crows, bolder than the rest, flew down, and 



[Par ion'/ Grim 



. Phttt by Schalaitic Photo. Co.] 



A HALF-GROWN TIGER CUB 



Tigers "groiv to their head," like children. The head of a half-grown cub is as long, though 

 not so broad, as that of the adult 



