THE BIOGRAPHY OF A TIGER 19 



ears, licked the oozing gore of his victim, and muttered 

 and mumbled diabolically to himself. 



After sunset there were more horrible noises and growl- 

 ings in the ravine, but the cub had to permit the other 

 members of his charming family to participate, and re- 

 markably soon nothing at all remained of that succulent 

 appetiser. 



When they moved abroad that night the young tiger 

 walked abreast of mother ; nor did he once run in between 

 her great soft forepaws, as hitherto he had been so prettily 

 accustomed to do. 



They were pacing silently along a forest cart-track in 

 the soft warm dust, taking advantage of the easy pathway 

 it afforded, as do all the Indian carnivores and bears when 

 wandering by night. It was the month of an arid Indian 

 April, that parching, sun-enthralled time when the jungles 

 are at their barest, and almost every tree is stripped of 

 its leaves, which now form a tindery, crackling carpeting 

 on the ground below. The grass is dry and beaten down 

 in long, brittle swathes, the festooning creepers and other 

 tangle born of the warm rain long since dead and scorched, 

 their once luxuriant green seared to a lifeless whitish 

 yellow. The watercourses even those large enough to 

 deserve the appellation of considerable rivers lie dry 

 and baked in the quivering heat-haze, long reaches of 

 whitened, lime-encrusted pebbles, sand, or rocky boulders, 

 marked by rare pools at a few favoured spots in their 

 desolate course. 



But in spite of these dreary appearances this season is 

 actually the commencement of the Indian spring. Another 

 short month or so, and this parched jungle will be bursting 

 into fresh green leafage ; even now the sap is rising so 

 fast that many of the trees are literally raining with the 

 surplus juice, which, expelled from the extremities of 

 budding twigs in tiny spurts, falls spray-like in a delicate 

 gauzy shower around. The mhowa^ sweet manna-provider 



