222 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



tree or an elephant's back you may shoot tigers with 

 safety ; but when you come down to the ground, and 

 either advance on foot to meet the tiger or wait on 

 foot for it to be driven up, the feeling comes home to 

 you of the marvellous strength and activity that are 

 combined in that beautiful frame. It may be within 

 a few yards of you, perhaps, seeing all that you do, 

 and itself unseen. It can steal noiselessly through 

 the forest where you can only move with crackling of 

 leaves and breaking of twigs. You know that, when 

 the occasion comes, that wonderful lithe body can 

 come with lightning speed through the thick-tangled 

 growth that hampers and impedes your every move- 

 ment. Finally, you know that at close quarters a 

 man is as helpless as a child against the overpower- 

 ing weight and strength of an animal that kills an 

 ox at a blow. 



When you are on the ground following up or 

 waiting for a tiger, you realise all this with some 

 vividness. And in this connection I would advance 

 the theory that the curious horror which some people 

 have of cats is not, as is sometimes said, a sixth sense, 

 but merely an instinctive terror, inherited from simian 

 ancestors, of the feline tribe. The instinct has, I 

 suggest, died out in the majority of cases, but exists 

 in occasional individuals in the same manner that 

 simian tricks of raising the ears or eyebrows are 

 sometimes to be seen. 



But whatever the average person's feelings may be 

 regarding the race of cats, there is little doubt that 

 almost every one has a peculiar sensation of the 

 almost god-like beauty, power, activity, and strength 



