92 VERTEBRATA. MAMMALIA. 



this last manoeuvre, which, is no doubt an instinctive 

 action when highly excited. 



Since the introduction of fire-arms into India, the 

 hunting of the Tiger has become the most noble 

 and most exciting of field-sports, and is pursued with 

 great avidity by the British inhabitants. Mounted 

 on well-trained elephants, which seem to enter with 

 keenness into the spirit of their riders, the wealthy 

 residents, both native and European, assemble with 

 " pomp and circumstance " peculiarly eastern. The 

 details of these dangerous sports are not a little in- 

 teresting to us, whose notions of hunting rise no 

 higher than running down a timid hare, or out- 

 witting a paltry fox ; but they are so numerous that 

 it is extremely difficult to make a selection. We 

 have chosen the following, however, because it is a 

 fair specimen of all, interesting in its facts, graphi- 

 cally told, and above all, because it is given by a 

 lady, one of the chief actors in the scene. 



" We had elephants, guns, balls, and all other 

 necessaries prepared, and about seven in the morn- 

 ing we set off. The jungle was generally composed 

 of corinda-bushes, which were stunty and thin, and 

 looked like ragged thorn-bushes ; nothing could be 

 more desolate in appearance ; it seemed as if we had 

 got to the farthest limits of cultivation or the haunts 

 of men. At times the greener bunches of jungle, 

 the usual abodes of the beasts of prey during the 

 daytime, and the few huts scattered here and there, 

 which could hardly be called villages, seemed like 

 islands in the desert waste around us. We stopped 



