TIGER. 385 



Formerly, before European sportsmen armed with rifles had access to most 

 parts of the country by means of railways, whole districts in India were either 

 depopulated or deserted owing to the ravages of man-eaters; and the sites of 

 hamlets abandoned from this cause are still visible in the jungles. Not unfrequently, 

 however, the cunning and caution of the man-eater baffles, at least for a time, all 

 the efforts of the European sportsman to encompass its destruction ; while there 

 are districts where one of these pests may continue its depredations for a long 

 period without coming under the notice of Europeans. The destruction of human 

 life by tigers, most of which are probably habitual man-eaters, is, indeed, still 

 deplorably large, especially in the more thinly-populated districts. According to 

 the Government returns, it appears that within a period of six years no less 

 than 4218 natives fell victims to tigers, while in the Central Provinces alone 285 

 were killed during the years 1868 and 1869. In regard to the ravages committed 

 by individual man-eaters, a gentleman, writing from Nayadunka to Sir J. Fayrer, 

 states that " one tiger in 1867, 1868, 1869, killed respectively twenty-seven, thirty- 

 four, and forty-seven people. I have known it attack a party, and kill four or 

 five at a time. Once it killed a father, mother, and three children ; and the week 

 before it was shot it killed seven people. It wandered over a tract of twenty 

 miles, never remaining in the same spot two consecutive days, and was at last 

 killed by a bullet from a spring-gun when returning to feed on the body of one of 

 its victims." It will be observed that the concluding sentence of this account does 

 not bear out Sir Samuel Baker's statement that the man-eater never revisits its 

 " kill." The account of the depredations of another man-eater, which infested the 

 neighbourhood of the station of Naini-Tal in the Eastern Himalaya, states that 

 the animal " prowled about within a circle, say of twenty miles, and that it killed 

 on an average about eighty men per annum." 



In order to rid themselves of these pests, the natives of India and other 

 countries have had recourse to all kinds of traps and other devices. Among these, 

 pitfalls used to be a favourite method. According to Mr. Wallace, in Sumatra 

 these pits are made in the form of an iron-furnace, wider at the bottom than at the 

 top, and from about fifteen to twenty feet in depth ; a sharpened stake being fixed 

 at the bottom. The top of the pit is then covered over with branches and leaves, 

 and so perfect is the concealment, that Mr. Wallace states that he has more 

 than once had a narrow escape from falling into these pits. Indeed, one 

 unfortunate traveller was killed by a fall on to the sharpened stake, after 

 which that portion of the contrivance was forbidden. Large mouse-trap cages 

 for catching tigers alive were formerly sometimes used in certain parts of India ; 

 but Mr. Blanford states that these were more successful in catching leopards than 

 tigers. Poisoning the " kill " of a tiger is also a method that has been more or less 

 successful; while bows with poisoned arrows and spring-guns set in the tiger's 

 path have also been called into requisition. In certain parts of the Mysore district 

 Mr. Sanderson states that the villagers are in the habit of surrounding tigers with 

 nets, and then spearing or shooting them ; this, except watching, being the only 

 means by which they can be killed in covert which is too dense to admit of driving. 

 In Orissa, on the upper part of the Eastern Coast of India, and perhaps elsewhere, 

 the natives, according to Mr. Blanford, construct a gigantic figure-4 trap loaded 



VOL. i. 25 



