TIGER 



5810 



TIGER 



and handsome churches, but the native quarter 

 is typically Oriental. The city is a manufac- 

 turing center of cotton and woolen goods, felt, 

 carpets, tobacco, oil and other commodities, 

 and is a market for a fertile agricultural re- 

 gion. Among the important institutions are a 

 museum of natural history, which has a library 

 connected with it, a museum of silkworm cul- 

 ture and large botanical gardens. There is rail- 

 way connection with Poti and Batum, ports on 

 the Black Sea, and with cities in interior Rus- 

 sia. In the vicinity there are numerous sulphur 

 springs. Tim's was formerly the capital of the 

 independent kingdom of Georgia, which came 

 under the control of Russia in 1799. Georgians 

 and Armenians make up most of the popula- 

 tion, which numbered 307,300 in 1913. 



TIGER, a lithe, beautifully-marked jungle 

 cat of Asia. For strength and fierceness it has 

 only one rival, the lion; while for cruelty and 

 treachery it probably has none. Rudyard Kip- 

 ling, in his Jungle Books, makes a scarred tiger, 

 Shere Khan, the outlaw of the jungle; he killed 

 not only for need of food but also for love of 

 blood, and was feared by all the other animals 

 for his viciousness and cruelty, and despised for 

 his treachery. The story is highly imaginative, 

 although it probably presents a fairly accurate 

 interpretation of tiger nature. 



In size, in the structure of the skeleton, in 

 teeth and claws, the lion and the tiger are 

 much alike, but there the resemblance ceases. 

 The tiger has no mane and it cannot roar. Its 

 coat is not dull fawn, but is bright fawn in 



PIEAD OF THE TIGER 



color, shading to white underneath and beauti- 

 fully marked with irregular stripes of black. 

 The largest tigers are found in India; those in 

 Southern Siberia, Turkestan, Persia, China and 

 Japan, and those on the islands of Java and 

 Sumatra, are smaller. The Indian tiger is some- 

 times as much as ten feet long from the tip of 



the nose to the tip of the tail, and its coat is 

 very glossy and brilliant; the tigers of colder 

 regions have a thicker, rougher fur, which is 

 much duller in color. 



The tiger is a carnivorous (flesh-eating) ani- 

 mal. In India its principal food consists of 

 deer, wild pigs, antelope, young buffalo for 

 even the tiger fears the powerful old bulls 

 and cattle, to the number of about 32,000 in a 

 year. The terrible "man-eaters," who have 

 been known to kill as many as 130 natives in 

 one year in India, are not the young, fierce 

 beasts, but are old tigers whose first vigor has 

 departed and whose teeth are so worn that they 

 find men even easier to kill than domesticated 

 cattle. Sometimes a whole district will be de- 

 serted if a man-eater invades it, for attempts 

 to destroy tigers by traps, pitfalls, spring guns 

 or poisoned arrows are not very effective. 



The tiger usually hunts at night, unless it is 

 ravenous, on which occasions it becomes ex- 

 tremely bold and will kill in daylight. It will 

 climb trees occasionally, and it swims easily and 

 readily. It is reported that tigers will even 

 swim from one island to another in search of 

 a better hunting ground. The mother tiger is 

 very affectionate and often keeps her cubs, from 

 two to six in number, with her until they are 

 nearly two years old. As soon as they can no 

 longer live on her milk she takes them out into* 

 the jungle and teaches them to kill for them- 

 selves. Once they have learned to provide 

 their own food, the cubs are abandoned by the 

 mother, who may eat one of them at a later 

 date when food is scarce. 



How Tigers Are Captured. Because tigers 

 have their lairs in the jungle, where the grass 

 and undergrowth are very high and dense, they 

 cannot be successfully hunted on foot. Natives 

 are sent out on foot to "beat" the bush and 

 drive the tigers out of their hiding places into 

 the open, where they are shot by white hunters 

 mounted on elephants. Both beaters and ele- 

 phants are mortally afraid of the tiger, for even 

 the elephant's thick skin is not proof against 

 the terrible claws of the great cat. This sort 

 of big game hunting is exciting and dangerous, 

 for a wounded tiger sometimes springs upon 

 the elephant's back to attack the hunters in 

 the howdah, or cage. A much safer method is 

 to tether a goat or some other live bait in a 

 place where tigers may be expected, and then 

 to shoot it from a platform erected on poles 

 or in a near-by tree. Tigers for zoos are 

 caught by -nets spread in their paths, or are 

 trapped in grass-covered pits. 



