CAT. 



greatest ease ; and when he is thus enraged, he cares ' of the 



but little for musket-shot, if they do not hit him in a 

 vital part. In his ordinary haunts, and when he is 

 neither hungry nor exasperated, the tiger is, like all 

 wild animals, afraid of fire, and in such cases a 

 lantern is sufficient protection for those who have 

 occasion to be in the woods at night ; but when 

 hungry or excited, fire does not deter him from 

 making his attacks. Sharp shrill sounds annoy the 

 tiger a good deal ; and in some places where they 

 are abundant, the people contrive to keep them at a 

 distance by blowing a sort of horn which has an 

 acute and piercing sound. But, formidable as the 

 tiger is in these islands, he cannot be considered so 

 absolute a monarch as he is iij the jungles of the 

 Sunderbunds. In these last, there is no animal to 

 attack the tiger, save the gavial, and he is only in the 

 water or on its margin ; but in the islands, the 

 great python, nlar-sawa of the Javese, usually called 

 a boa constrictor, though it is not a boa, except in 

 manners, which are very much alike in all crushing 

 serpents, occasionally makes prize of the tiger, and 

 even lies in wait for him, and, strongly as he is built, 

 and little as he cares for common wounds, the folds of 

 this powerful serpent very speedily break his bones. 



From his greater activity and daring, or rather, 

 perhaps, from his frequenting more fertile places, the 

 tiger carries oft' human beings much more frequently 

 than the lion ; but there does not appear to be much 

 truth in the common saying, that he gives human flesh 

 the preference. Beasts of prey, from the nature of 

 their organs of taste, cannot be very dainty in their 

 choice ; and the probability is, that of prey equally 

 within his power, the tiger takes that which is the 

 largest. There is not more truth in the allegation of 

 the older naturalists, that the whiskers of the tiger are 

 poisonous. The breath of the animal is offensive, 

 and both the bite and the tear occasion ugly and 

 festering wounds, but that is the case with the 

 whole genus. As was remarked of the lion, the 

 saliva of the tiger may not be a very wholesome 

 application to a wound ; but there is no reason to 

 suppose that any of the genus is furnished with a 

 direct poison, as they are sufficiently armed without 

 it, and nature, though she always does enough, never 

 does too much. 



The tiger has many more points of resemblance to 

 the domestic cat, both in form and in manners, than the 

 lion has ; and in the few instances which we have of 

 tame tigers, they are represented as playful animals. 

 They are not, of course, very safe play-fellows, as if 

 they are irritated, they become quite unmanageable ; 

 but still there have been instances in India, of full grown 

 tigers being led about in chains, though, as is usually 

 done with bears soled, they have been kept muzzled. 

 The muzzling is, in the case of both animals, more an 

 apparent means of safety than a real one, as the most 

 formidable weapons of both are the paws ; and these 

 led tigers have, upon occasion, been unmuzzled, in 

 order that they might show how a tiger deals with his 

 prey, which cannot be so well or so safely observed 

 in wild nature. 



Now, nearly the same action may be seen by any 

 one, who has the opportunity of seeing a wild cat kill 

 a hare or a rabbit, and part of it is displayed by the 

 domestic cat when in play. If you tumble the cat on 

 her back, and tease her to an affected biting at your 

 hand, she will embrace the lower part of your arm 

 M ith her paws, and keep working away with the claws 



731 



hind feet on the upper part, as if she were 

 attempting to tear that part in length, and the wild 

 cat, when she has sprung upon a hare or rabbit, and 

 beat it down, seizes it by the throat with her teeth, 

 and round the shoulders with her paws. Then she 

 turns on her back, and by the action of the claws of 

 her hind feet tears open the stomach. Even bears 

 have a similar habit, and often tear open before they 

 bite ; the hugging and tearing jointly being with them 

 the means of putting animals to death. When the 

 led tiger was unmuzzled, and a sheep fastened to a 

 stake by a rope offered to it as prey, it advanced 

 crawling and cat-wise, till within the proper distance. 

 Then it sprung, beat the animal to the ground, 

 seized it by the throat, clasped it around the shoul- 

 ders, and, turning on its back, tore open the abdomen 

 with the claws of the hind feet. 



It is probable that this mode of preparing for the 

 feast is common to all the genus Fc/is, at least when 

 their prey is of any considerable size ; and, indeed, 

 it is not easy to see how they could, in any other 

 way, rip open the belly of an animal, without com- 

 pletely mangling the carcase ; and it is well known to 

 be the habit of beasts of prey to open their victims 

 and devour the viscera before they proceed to eat, 

 and, in the case of the weighter victims, before thev 

 carry off the body. There are some of the otheV 

 carnivorous genera which first break open the skull 

 and eat the brains of their prey, but that does not ap- 

 pear to be done by any of the Felirue. They cer- 

 tainly do open the abdomen, and probably the chest, 

 of their prey; and if they do not effect this by means 

 of their claws, it is not easy to see in what manner 

 they can accomplish it. We have an analogous case 

 in animals of another class ; birds of prey, or, at all 

 events, the golden eagle. When a rabbit or cat is 

 thrown into the cage of that powerful bird, if the cage 

 is large enough for allowing the bird to display even 

 her habit at close quarters, the animal is, with the 

 rapidity of lightning, struck down by the pounce, and 

 the eagle is instantly seen over it with one foot 

 clutching the throat, and the other the lower part of 

 the abdomen. It is held in this fashion with the 

 wings of the eagle shivering, as they generally are 

 when she kills ; and when the victim ceases to throb, 

 which is very speedily, the Eagle, with one sweep of 

 her beak, and in all probability with that trenchant 

 hook on the tip of the upper mandible which projects 

 over the under one, which other than this appears not 

 to have much use, rips open the integuments of the 

 belly as neatly as if it were done by the knife of a 

 butcher. The claw of the carnivorous mammalia (at 

 least of the Felinte) appears to be used in the same 

 manner, and thus they get at the viscera without man- 

 gling the carcase, which they could not possibly do by 

 means of the teeth only. 



It is very generally stated, in the books which pro- 

 fess to give accounts of this genus of animals, and 

 particularly in descriptions of the tiger, that the first 

 thing which they do is to gorge themselves by drink- 

 ing the blood of the animal from the vessels, and 

 that it is for this purpose that they plunge their heads 

 into the cavity of the body. Now, it would be a very 

 good rule in natural history, and one would think 

 far from a harsh or unreasonable one, to make it 

 binding on every one who asserts that an animal does 

 any thing, to show that it is capable of doing that 

 thing. How it does it would be desirable ; but the 

 other and simpler matter should be indispensable. 



