94 FELIDJE. 



into the open country when the grain is on the ground. In some places 

 they do much mischief, and have been known to carry off the inhabitants 

 out of the villages whilst sleeping in their verandahs during the night. 

 The female has from two to four young, and does not breed at any 

 particular season. Their chief prey is cattle, but they also catch the 

 wild hog, the sambar, and more rarely the spotted deer. It is naturally 

 a cowardly animal, and always retreats from opposition, until wounded 

 or provoked. Several instances came to notice of its being compelled 

 to relinquish its prey by the cattle in a body driving it off. In one case 

 an official report was made of a herd of buffaloes rushing on a tiger that 

 had seized the herd-boy, and forcing it to drop him. Its retiring from 

 the wild hog has been already adverted to. Though the wild hog often 

 becomes its prey, it sometimes falls a victim to the successful resistance 

 of the wild boar. I once found a full-grown tiger newly killed, evidently 

 by the rip of a boar's tusk ; and two similar instances were related to me 

 by a gentleman who had witnessed them one of a tiger, the other of a 

 panther. It is generally believed a tiger always kills his own food, and 

 will not eat carrion. I met with one instance of a tigress and two full- 

 grown cubs devouring a bullock that had died of disease. I saw the 

 carcass in the evening: next day, on the report of tigers having been heard 

 in the night, I followed their track, and found she had dragged the dead 

 animal into the centre of a cornfield, and picked the bones quite clean, 

 after which she found a buffalo, killed it, and eat only a small portion of 

 it. Another instance was related in a letter from a celebrated sportsman 

 in Khandeish, who having killed a tigress, on his return to his tents sent 

 a pad elephant to bring it home. The messenger returned reporting that 

 on his arrival he found her alive. They went out next morning to the 

 spot, and discovered that she had been dragged into a ravine by another 

 tiger and half the carcass devoured. They found him close by, and killed 

 him also. The Bheels in Khandeish say that in the monsoon, when food 

 is scarce, the Tiger feeds on frogs, and an instance occurred some years ago 

 in that province of one being killed in a state of extreme emaciation from 

 a porcupine's quill that had passed through his gullet, and prevented his 

 swallowing, and which had probably been planted there in his attempt to 

 make one of these animals his prey. Many superstitious ideas prevail 

 among the natives regarding the Tiger. They imagine that an additional 

 lobe is added to his liver every year ; that his claws arranged together so 

 as to form a circle, and hung round a child's neck, preserve it from the 



