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 eftbrts 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 whicli are probably habitual man-eaters, is, indeed, still 

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

 the Government returns, it appears that within a period of six 3-ears no less 

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

 were killed duiing the years 1868 and ISU'J. In regard to the ravages connnitted 

 by in<lividual man-eaters, a gentleman, writing from Naj-adunka to Sir J. Faj-rer, 

 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 peojile. 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 the.se pests, the natives of India and other 

 countries have had recour.se to all kinds of traps and other devices. Among the.se, 

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

 the.se pits are made in the form of an iron-furnace, widtr at the bottom than at the 

 top, and from about fifteen to twenty feet in tlepth ; 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 hail 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 foi-bidden. Large mouse-traj) cages 

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

 but Mr. Blanford states that these were moi'e succe.ssful in catching leopards than 

 tiger.s. 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 i-equisition. 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 



