METHOD OF MEASUREMENT. 85 



tigresses shot by him in Western India, which are very much 

 less than those recorded by Captain Eice (pages 312-25), the 

 average of four tigers, two of them, pronounced stout or fine 

 heavy beasts, being nine feet six and a half inches, and of 

 the same number of tigresses eight feet nine inches. The 

 author remarks (page 325) that " many men have talked to 

 me of tigers twelve and eleven feet long, and in some coun- 

 tries they may attain that size, but speaking from my own 

 experience, I can only say I have not fallen in with them in 

 Malwa or Minar. I have seen tigers nearly ten feet long, 

 whose skins could easily have been stretched when fresh to 

 eleven or more feet, but the breadth would have been greatly 

 diminished and the beauty of the skin impaired." 



The difference in the measurements in the two books, 

 " Tiger Shooting in India," and " Wild Men and Wild Beasts," 

 is startling, and amounts to two feet two inches in males, and 

 ten inches in females. 



The method of measuring has of course much to do with 

 the measurements recorded, as also has the time when they 

 were taken ; for example, a tiger measuring ten feet in length 

 while warm, immediately after death, will be three or four 

 inches less some hours afterwards when stark and cold, but 

 the skin on being stripped and pegged out may stretch to 

 eleven feet or even more. According to this experience, the 

 large skin in my possession, mentioned above as that of the 

 very old and monstrous beast shot in Moorshedabad district, 

 must have been that of a male not less than eleven and a half 

 feet in length when alive. Now he was one among hundreds, 

 and yet not so long as the average of the first half-dozen given 

 in Captain Eice's work as shot in Central India. 



As some evidence of the extreme length attained by male 

 tigers and panthers, I may be permitted here to state that, 

 among hundreds in Assam and Bengal, killed by me singly and 

 in company with other sportsmen, ten feet four inches was that 

 of the largest and heaviest killed in the former Province, in 

 the Kamroop district, and this individual had a comparatively 

 short thick tail. The largest panther measured eight feet 



