T I G 



discharged a poisoned arrow, generally with fatal effect, 

 when the animal came in contact with a cord stretched 

 across its path, and this method is said still to he in use in 

 some places. Again, a heavy beam was suspended over 

 the way traversed by the tiger, which fell and crushed 

 him on his disengaging a cord which let the beam i'all. 

 A Persian device is said to consist of a large spherical 

 strong interwoven bamboo cage, or one made of other 

 sble materials, with intervals throughout, three or four 

 inches broad. Under this shelter, which is picketed to the 

 ml in the tiger's haunt, a man provided with two or 

 thn-e short strong spears takes post by night, with a dog 

 or a goat as his companion, wraps himself in his quilt and 

 to sleep. A tiger arrives, of whose presence the man 

 is warned by the (log or the goat, and generally, after 

 :ing about, rears himself up against the cage, upon 

 which the man stabs him resolutely with his short spear 

 through the interstice of the wicker-work. It seems hidi- 

 ';:lk of taking a tiger with birdlime ; but it is said 

 aptured in Oude. When a tiger's track is 

 taintd, the peasants, we are told, collect a quantity of leaves 

 :ibling those of the sycamore, and common in most 

 Indian underwoods; these they smear with a kind of bird- 

 lime which is made from the berries of an indigenous and 

 by no means scarce tree, and strew them with the adhesive 

 Kubat&nce uppermost in some gloomy spot to which the 

 resorts m the heat of the day. If he treads on one of 

 the limed leaves, he generally begins by trying to shake it 

 from his paw, and not succeeding, proceeds to rub it 

 'st his jaw in order to get rid of it. Thus hi 



'utinated, and the uneasy animal rolls, 



perhaps among many more of the smeared leaves, till he 



.11 -s ( M\cloped : in this state he has been compared 



to a man who lias been tarred and feathered. The tiger's 



irritation and uneasiness find vent in dreadful howlings ; on 



ants hasten to the spot, and shoot him 



without difficulty. 



plan of the box-trap and looking-glass, a device to 



b ind in antient sculpture according to Montfaucon. i.s 



to be practised among the Chinese at the present day. 



So much for the trapping of the Tiger. The. tiger-lnmt 



is perhaps the grandest and most exciting of wild-sports. 



i sin-h occasions the whole neighbourhood is on the 



mo\e, and two hundred elephants have been known to 



take the Held ; from ten to thirty of these gigantic animals, 



-portsmcii armed with rifles, have not un- 



; art eel fur the jungle. 



itain Mundy gives a short but spirited description 

 uf a tiger-hunt. The party, he tells us, found immense 

 quantities of game, wild-hogs, hog-deer, and the Ncil- 

 gliie ;" they, however, strictly abstained from firing, 

 i heir whole battery for the nobler game of which 

 in pursuit. They had to pass through a thick 

 finest, and the author gives a very interesting description 

 of the power and dexterity of the elephants in overthrow- 

 ing trees to make a road : ' On clearing the wood, 



we entered an open space of marshy grass, not three 



feet high ; a large herd of cattle were feeding there, and 



the herdsman was .silling singing under a bush, when, just 



as the former began to move before ns, up sprang the \cry 



tiger to whom our visit was intended, and cantered otf 



i a bare plain dotted with small patches of Im-h- 



juiigle. He took to the open country in a style which 



1 have more become a fox than 'a tiger, who is ex- 



<1 by his pursuers to light and not to run, and as he 



''ushed on the flank of the line, only one bullet was 



fired at him ere he cleared the thick grass. He was 



unhurt ; and we pursued him at full speed. Twice he threw 



M out by stopping short in small strips of jungle, and then 



."ig back after we had prised : ;>i,d he had given us a 



;ast trot of about two miles, when Colonel Arnold, 



who ild, at last reached him by a capital 



ng in full career. As soon as he felt him- 



ied, the tiger crept into a close thicket ol 



and bushes, and crouched. The two leading sportsmen 



t where he lay, and us I came up I saw 



him, throiiuh an aperture, rising to attempt a charge. Aly 



mahout had just before, in the heat of the chase, dropped 



Inch 1 had refused to allow him to 



iliant being notoriou , and 



by the goading he had undergone, be 



consequently un .le; he appeared to see the tiger 



Nyl-ffl u. [kinnotr., vol. ii, p. 76.] 



T I G 



as soon as myself, and I had only time to fire one shot, 

 when he suddenly rushed with the greatest fury into the 

 thicket, and falling upon his kneesj nailed the tiger with 

 his tusks to the ground. Such was the violence of the 

 shock, that my servant, who sat, behind, was thrown out, 

 and one of my guns went overboard. The struggles of 

 my elephant to crush his still resisting foe, who had fixed 

 one paw on his eye, were so energetic, that I was obliged 

 to hold on with all my strength, to keep myself in the 

 houdah. The second barrel too of the gun, which I still 

 retained in my hand, went off in the scuffle, the ball 

 passing close to the mahout's ear, whose situation, poor 

 fellow, was anything but enviable. As soon as my ele- 

 phant was prevailed upon to leave the killing part of the 

 business to the sportsmen, they gave the roughly used tiger 

 the coup-de-grace. It was a very fine female, with the 

 most beautiful skin I ever saw.' 



In the 'Asiatic Annual Register,' fur 1804, a gentleman 

 who had been present at the killing of above thirty tigers 

 gives an account of a hunting-party of fhe Nawab Asuf- 

 ud-Dowlah. After describing the immense cavalcade of 

 the Nawab, he says : ' The first tiger we saw and killed 

 was in the mountains ; we went to attack him about noon ; 

 he wii-.i in a narrow valley, which the Nawab surrounded 

 with above two hundred elephants ; we heard him growl 

 horribly in a thick bush in the middle of the valley. Being 

 accustomed to the sport and very eager, I pushed in my 

 elephant; the fierce beast charged me immediately ; the 

 elephant, a timid animal, turned tail, and deprived me of 

 the opportunity to fire. I ventured again, attended by 

 two or three other elephants ; the tiger made a spring, and 

 , reached the back of one of the elephants on which 

 liiree or four men; the elephant shook himself so 

 forcibly as to throw these men off his back, and they tumbled 

 into the bush ; I gave them up for lost, but was agreeably 

 surprised to see them creep out unhurt. His Excellency 

 was all this time on a rising ground near the thicket, look- 

 ing on calmly, and beckoning to me to drive the tiger 

 towards him. I made another attempt, and with more 

 success ; he darted out towards me on my approach, roaring 

 furiously and lashing his sides with his tail. I luckily gut. 

 a shot and hit him ; he retreated into the bush, and ten or 

 twelve elephants just then pushed into the thicket, alarmed 

 the tiger, and obliged him to run towards the Nawab, who 

 instantly gave him a warm reception, and with the. assist- 

 ance of some of his omras, or lords, laid the tigersprawling 

 on his side. A loud shout of wha ! irha ! proclaimed the 

 victory.' 



There is in Bishop Heber's ' Journal ' a most graphic de- 

 scription of a tiger-hunt, but our limits will not permit us 

 to indulge in more of these stirring accounts. 



Those who have represented the tiger as untameablo 

 have no ground for the assertion. It is as capable of being 

 tamed, and of attachment, even to fondness, for its keeper, 

 as any other animal of its kind. We have seen many in- 

 stances of this mutual good understanding between the 

 man and the beast, and Mr. Bennett mentions a remarkable 

 example in his ' Tower Menagerie.' A tigress of great 

 beauty, in the Tower when he wrote, and scarcely a j-ear 

 old, had been, during her passage from Calcutta, allowed 

 to range about the vessel unrestricted, and had become 

 perfectly familiar with the sailors, showing no! the slightest. 

 symptoms of ferocity. On her arrival jn the Thames, the 

 irritation produced by the sight of strangers instantly 

 changed her temper, rendering her irascible and dangerous. 

 So sulky and savage was she, that Mr. Cop.-, who then kept 

 the lions in the Tower, could hardly be prevailed on by 

 her former keeper, who came to see her, to allow him to 

 enter her den ; but as soon as the tigress recognised her 

 old friend, she fawned on him, licked him, caressed him, 

 and manifested the most extravagant signs of pleasure ; 

 and when, at hist, he left her, she cried and whined for the 

 remainder of the day. The tame tigers of the mendicant 

 priests, or Fakirs, of Hindustan, are weU known. 



But whilst, there can be no doubt of the tameable quali- 

 ties of the tiger, and indeed of all the great cats, they are 

 not to be incautiously trusted. The natural disposition 

 is always ready to break out; and the mildest of them, 

 though 



' Ne'er so tame, so clierish'J, and lock'd up, 



Will h;Lve ;i ild trick of his ancestors.' 



Thus Bontius states that, in 1628, a tiger at Batavia, 

 which had been brought up from a cub, and accustomed 



