280 TIGERS CLIMBING TREES. 



seen had dragged, not carried, their kills, I was disposed to doubt the truth 

 of their ever lifting a full-grown bullock clear off the ground ; but I sub- 

 sequently saw where this feat had been performed on two occasions by two 

 separate tigers. One of these, an immensely powerful beast, had taken up 

 a bullock weighing probably 400 lb., and carried it through a very dense 

 thicket for about three hundred yards. The other, a small tigress, carried 

 an old bullock some distance through open jungle. These tigers' object in 

 doing this was not apparent, except that their kills had been constantly 

 meddled with, and they may possibly have had some idea of leaving no 

 traces behind them, though it is doubtful if their intelligence were equal to 

 such a flight as this. In both of the above cases the drag of one hind-leg 

 of the bullock was observable here and there. 



Tigers frequently astonish those most conversant with their ordinary 

 habits by some erratic conduct, and it is unsafe to condemn as untrue almost 

 anything that may be related of their doings (as long as it is nothing of 

 which they are physically incapable) merely because it is unusual or unpre- 

 cedented. An account given by two sportsmen a few years ago of a tigress 

 climbing a tree in a wood on the Neilgherry hills was much criticised, and 

 even laughed at, by many who had scarcely perhaps ever seen a tiger out of 

 a menagerie, or at least had never happened to see one up a tree. Tigers avii; 

 not physically incapable of chmbing, and though their doing so is decidedly 

 unusual, there is no reason why they should not occasionally use their 

 powers. I have never seen a tiger in a tree myself, but their claw-marks 

 are constantly to be found where they amuse themselves by springing and 

 clutching the soft bark, sometimes at tliirteen feet from the ground. The 

 natives believe that this is done to sharpen their claws, or as a means 

 of relieving irritation in the claws caused by putrid flesh ; and the marks 

 may sometimes be made by juvenile tigers at play. There is one kind of 

 tree called in Canarese " muttaga " (the bastard teak, Buttea frondosa), the 

 bark of which is very soft, and the sap, wliich it gives forth at the slightest 

 wound, of a blood-red colour. The tiger is particularly fond of clawing this 

 tree, and the imaginative natives ascribe this to his supposed delight at the 

 sight of what he believes to be blood ! 



The tiger's powers of enduring hunger and thirst are very great. In 

 January 1870, a tiger, tigress, and panther were surrounded with nets by 

 some villagers in a valley near which a friend and myself were encamped. 

 We shot the panther on the first day, but the enclosed thicket was so dense 

 that we could not get the tigers to show, and we had no elephants. On the 

 fifth day, however, we wounded them both. After this, as nothing would 

 make them break cover, we were obliged to send to Mysore for elephants, 



