138 HUNTING ADVENTURES. 



of their body forwards, often enables them to spring on the head of 

 the largest elephants, and fairly pull them down to the ground, 

 riders and all. When a tiger springs on an elephant, the latter is 

 generally able to shake him off under his feet, and then woe be to 

 him. The elephant either kneels on him and crushes him at once, 

 or gives him a kick which breaks half his ribs, and sends him flying 

 perhaps twenty paces. The elephants, however, are often dread- 

 fully torn ; and a large old tiger sometimes clings too fast to be thus 

 dealt with. In this case it often happens that the elephant himself 

 falls, from pain, or from the hope of rolling on his enemy ; and the 

 people on his back are in very considerable danger both from friends 

 and foes, for Mr. Boulderson said the scratch of a tiger was some- 

 times venomous, as that of a cat is said to be. But this did not 

 often happen ; and, in general, persons wounded by his teeth or 

 claws, if not killed outright, recovered easily enough." 



We add to the Bishop's story one more by a gentleman in the 

 civil service of the British East India Company. 



" I was at Jaffna, at the northern extremity of the Island of 

 Ceylon, in the beginning of the year 1819: when, one morning 

 my servant called me an hour or two before my usual time, with, 

 ' Master, master ! people sent for master's dogs tiger in the town !' 

 Now, my dogs chanced to be some very degenerate specimens of a 

 fine species, called the Poligar dog, which I should designate as a 

 sort of wiry-haired greyhound, without scent. I kept them to 

 hunt jackals; but tigers are very different things: by the way, 

 there are no real tigers in Ceylon ; but leopards and panthers are 

 always called so, and by ourselves as well as by the natives. This 

 turned out to be a panther. My gun chanced not to be put together; 

 and while my servant was doing it, the collector, and two medical 

 men, who had recently arrived, in consequence of the cholera 

 morbus having just then reached Ceylon from the continent, came 

 to my door, the former armed with a fowling-piece, and the two 

 latter with remarkably blunt hog-spears. They insisted upon 

 setting off without waiting for my gun, a proceeding not much to 

 my taste. The tiger (I must continue to call him so) had taken 

 refuge in a hut, the roof of which, as those of Ceylcn huts in 



