CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 103 



hour wondering what help she had wanted and 

 despising myself for having failed her." 



The tiger is found in most parts of India, 

 but it is absent from the extreme north-west 

 of the peninsula, and is also unknown in 

 Afghanistan and Ceylon. In appearance, it 

 is utterly different from the lion, though both 

 are members of the cat family. It has black 

 stripes, not unlike those of zebras, on its 

 orange coat, and the orange grows paler 

 with age. The tail has no tuft at the end, 

 like that of the lion, and the tiger is also 

 without the lion's mane, though the male 

 wears a handsome ruff on his neck. A full- 

 grown tiger may measure close on eleven 

 feet from the tip of its snout to the tip of 

 its tail, and, though there has been much 

 talk of tigers measuring twelve feet, none has, 

 so far, been recorded. 



The tiger's larder is very varied. Large deer 

 and small antelopes, tame cattle, jungle-fowl, 

 peacocks, and even crocodiles' eggs all figure in 

 his bill of fare. His natural food is wild game, 

 and with that he was doubtless satisfied in olden 

 time before men and their cattle came on the 

 scene to teach him other tastes. Nowadays, 

 however, tigers are divided by Anglo-Indians 

 under three heads game-eaters, cattle-eaters, 

 and man-eaters. As a matter of fact, not even 



