INDIAN SHOOTING 213 



tigers being accounted for by most writers by the native 

 story that the male tigers kill the young male cubs. The 

 writer offers another suggestion : may not the young male 

 tigers as soon as they leave their mothers avoid the domains 

 of the heavy old cattle-lifters, and taking to the hills and forest 

 form the game-killing class, till they are powerful enough to 

 succeed to the estates of their sires, either by force or by 

 inheritance, owing to their sire having met with an accident 

 when entertaining a sahib, and so settle down and take wives ? 

 The writer has no proof to give in support of this suggestion, 

 but merely offers it for sportsmen to consider. With respect 

 to the common native story that the age of tigers may be told 

 by the number of lobes in their livers, the writer made the 

 following observations in Central India : Tigress, 6 lobes ; 

 tiger, 8 lobes ; tigress, 7 lobes ; cub (male), 6 lobes ; male 

 panther, 7 lobes ; tigress, 7 lobes ; tiger, 8 lobes ; tigress, 7 

 lobes ; tigress (a very old light-coloured one), 7 lobes ; tiger, 

 7 lobes. 



Sanderson say he has shot tigers and panthers with from 

 9 to 15 lobes. An article on the age of tigers as shown by their 

 length, written by Mr. F. A. Shillingford for ' The Asian ' and 

 copied in 'Land and Water,' August 30, 1890, appears to be 

 worth quoting : 



It was the opinion of the late Mr. Joe Shillingford that in 

 Bengal and the Nepal Terai, at all events, tigers, as distinguished 

 from tigresses, did not attain full maturity until they attained a 

 length of over 10 ft., measured ' sportsman's style,' and that occa- 

 sionally they attain a length of n ft., and that the 12 ft. tiger 

 shot by the late Mr. C. A. Shillingford was an exceptional mon- 

 ster, like the exceptional tigress, 10 ft. 2 ins. in length, shot in 1867, 

 and in these opinions I entirely concur. I have a collection of 

 over a hundred tiger skulls, and in no case are the parietal 

 sutures obliterated from old age of skulls of tigers below io ft. 

 in length. 



Tigers take to water readily, and swim higher out of the 

 water than most animals. 



Elephants who take matters into their own hands and 



