212 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



long — to entirely support Sanderson's description. As regards 

 a tiger's powers of springing, Sanderson says he has often 

 measured the bounds of tigers that have pursued deer, and found 

 15 ft. to be about the distance they usually spring. 



The writer particularly noticed the way a tiger sprang at an 

 elephant : he did not bound from a distance at all, but simply 

 galloped up till he was just under the elephant's ear-hole, and 

 then sprang vertically upwards, placing his forepaws on the 

 elephant's head, and there he hung till the elephant shook him 

 oif. A tiger can with ease get his forepaws on to an object 

 twelve to fifteen feet from the ground ; but he seems clumsy in 

 getting sufficient hold with his hind paws to enable him to pro- 

 ceed after his first spring. Sanderson says that tigresses do not 

 breed at any fixed season. Sterndale states that they go with 

 young for about fifteen weeks, and produce from two to five at 

 a birth. Sanderson gives four as an unusually large number ; 

 the writer saw six taken out of a tigress, but probably these 

 would not all have been born alive. He also saw a tigress with 

 four cubs which must have been nearly a year old, one of 

 them which was shot measuring 4 ft. 9 ins. Mr. Shillingford's 

 memorandum quoted by Sterndale is interesting : 



Cubs one year old measure 

 „ two years „ 



„ three years „ 



When they reach three years of age they lose their ' milk 

 canines,' which are replaced by permanent fangs, and at this 

 period the mother leaves them to cater for themselves, the 

 tigress breeding once in three years. 



Mr. Shillingford also notes that out of 53 cubs (18 mothers) 

 2 c were males, and 22 females, the sex of two cubs not being given. 

 This tends to prove that there are an equal number of each 

 sex born,^ the marked preponderance of adult tigresses over 



* Sterndale's Mammalia. 



