HOW TIGERS TREAT THEIR PREY 67 



all your worry and annoyance from mosquitoes not to say of 

 the risks you run from malaria fever for nothing. 



However careful a man may be, however cool and collected 

 and a crack shot, the chances are not equal when he meets a 

 tiger on foot. Many tigers, notably in the Madras and Bombay 

 Presidencies and in Central India, are killed yearly in this 

 way, but scarcely a year passes without some fatal accident. 

 Enough has been said of the stealthy nature of the animal to 

 prove that he can hide in an inconceivably small space ; and 

 once within springing distance, in at all thick jungle, one pat 

 of a tiger's paw or one grip of his tremendous jaws are suf- 

 ficient to kill an ox. Then what chance has a puny man ? 

 Such is the vitality of one of these cats, that though shot 

 through the heart, he is still capable of killing half-a-dozen 

 men before giving up the ghost himself. At times tigers will, 

 like every other animal, seem ridiculously easy to kill ; but at 

 other times the more balls he gets into him, the more lively 

 he seems to be. I look upon shells as very effective for tigers 

 and soft-skinned beasts, but useless for pachyderms. 



Tigers were at one time very numerous at Pegu. An officer 

 of the Commission, Dangerfield, had a large powerful bulldog 

 which at night was chained to the foot of his bed killed 

 under the bed and carried off by a tiger ; and Dr. Le Presle, 

 Assistant-Surgeon of H.M.'s 84th Regt, baited a trap with a 

 duck and caught a large tiger ! 



The two Hamiltons, brothers, Richard and Douglas, were 

 second to none as shikaries. One of them, writing to the 

 South of India Observer, says : 



" Some years back, at Pykara, not far from the bungalow, a 

 tiger took a fancy to a Todah in preference to the buffaloes 

 he was tending. Two of the Todah's comrades were wit- 

 nesses of the affair, and they described how the tiger behaved 

 like a cat with a mouse. Having caught the man, he amused 

 himself for some time by letting him go, and then dodging 

 him as the poor victim tried to escape, before killing him out- 

 right, notwithstanding the shouts and yells of the lookers-on. 

 It is a moot question concerning man-eating tigers as to what 

 induces them to take to preying on human beings : some 

 affirm that it is only when age overtakes the animal, and he 

 finds himself unable to cope with his ordinary victims, deer or 



