THE TIGERS PARTIALITY TO PUTRID FLESH. 1 79 



"Apart from the interest naturally felt by all of us in 

 common in acquiring accurate information regarding the 

 feeding habits of the royal quarry, the result of this enquiry 

 will supply the sportsman with such knowledge as cannot 

 but prove of immense practical value to him ; if the tiger in 

 reality evinces a penchant for eating game killed by others 

 when it becomes putrid, the sportsman in future, instead of 

 offering him a living bait in the shape of a fat ox tethered 

 close to his haunts, to induce him to show himself, will use a 

 more tempting bait, to wit, a stinking carcass, the scent of 

 which he can sniff from afar. Moreover, the former plan, 

 which is now adopted, has a smack of cruelty which cannot 

 but be distasteful to the true sportsman, and he would gladly 

 avoid it." 



"P.S. — I have just found that our accomplished Indian 

 naturalist who, alas ! has recently been numbered with the 

 dead — I mean the late Mr. Blyth — was well aware that 

 tigers will eat animals killed by others, vide Indian Sporting 

 Review, New Series, No. 1. In the third number of the 

 same periodical, Hogspear (Mr. F. Bruce Simson, B.C.S., 

 who is reputed on good authority to have shot during his 

 brilliant career as a sportsman in this country literally 

 hundreds of tigers), also expresses the same opinion. He 

 says, ' many persons think tigers only eat the flesh of 

 animals which they kill.' Hogspear then goes on to relate 

 a lengthy tale — too lengthy to be tacked on to the fag-end 

 of this article, or I would gladly give it, — which shows that 

 tigers will feed on the carcass of even one of their own 

 kind ; this was established beyond doubt by the discovery 

 of large pieces of striped skins inside the stomachs of a 

 tigress and her cub, which had been shot near the spot 



