ORDER CARNIVORA: CARNIVORES 305 



This is a very brightly colored Tiger, with regular pattern, fore- 

 legs unstriped in front, conspicuous shoulder tufts, short neck mane, 

 thick cheek whiskers, slightly lengthened abdominal hair, and a thick 

 winter pelage. It differs from the form of Russian Turkestan in 

 having smaller stripes and dull brown instead of black thigh mark- 

 ings. (Schwarz, 1916, p. 352.) 



J. H. Miller (in Carruthers, 1913, pp. 582, 609-610) writes of this 

 Tiger: 



The dense jungles which cover so large a portion of the [Dzungarian] 

 lowlands . . . are the haunts of the tiger .... 



The tiger inhabits the same country as the wapiti, though, perhaps, keeping 

 rather more to the dense reed-jungle. It is, however, not entirely restricted 

 to the plains, for in the Kash, Kunguz, and Jingalong valleys, on the Upper 

 Hi River, it is found at an altitude of from 4,000 to 5,000 ft. among the 

 thick scrub on the edge of the spruce forest. Every year a few tiger-skins 

 find their way into the Urumchi, Manas, or Shi-Kho bazaars. They are, in 

 nearly every case, secured in winter, by the farmers and herdsmen living 

 on the edge of the jungle, by means of poisoned carcasses of sheep or goats. 

 Very few of the natives would dare to fire at a tiger .... Wild-pig . . . are 

 undoubtedly the tigers' staple food, but during the winter they occasionally 

 raid a farmer's flocks, and it is then that poisoned carcasses are laid out for 

 them. . . . 



I doubt if they are anywhere numerous. . . . 



It must be remembered that the tiger which inhabits Dzungaria and the 

 Tarim basin, also the Ala Kul, Balkash, Syr Darya, and other portions of 

 Russian Turkestan, is a very different animal to the Manchurian variety. 

 It is not so long-haired, and it is considerably smaller and less finely marked. 



Theodore Roosevelt (in Roosevelt and Roosevelt, 1926, p. 166) 

 writes of Tigers in the Tian Shan: "We were told that they existed 

 no longer in the Tekkes. . . . They [the natives] said that during 

 the last ten or fifteen years the native hunters had killed them off 

 with poisoned meat." 



"The tiger . . . formerly ranged in the forests on the edges of the 

 Tarim Basin and the swampy areas along the northern slopes of the 

 Thian Shan. . . . The tiger seems to have been exterminated.'' 

 (Morden, 1927, p. 123.) 



Alpheraky (1891) reported the species from the Tekes and the 

 lower Kunges, tributaries of the Hi River in Dzungaria (Ognev, 

 1935, p. 291). 



"The . . . tiger, which formerly inhabited the woods of the middle 

 Tarim, seems to be dying out" (Hedin, 1940, p. 149) . 



Caspian Tiger; Persian Tiger 



PANTHBRA TIGRIS VIRGATA (Illiger) 



Felis virgata Illiger, Abhandl. K. Akad. Wissen. Berlin, 1804-11, physikal. 

 KL, pp. 90 and 98, 1815. ("In Persien und am Kaspischen Meere"; type 

 locality restricted by Harper (1940, p. 194) to the "Province of Mazanderan, 

 northern Persia.") 

 11 



