MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 537 



body except the tiger. (This is an idea that can scarcely be got into th e 

 head of the ordinary native shikari, and there are some 'white men who are 

 very slow to grasp it though they may have been hunting tigers for a great 

 part of their lives.) Still they have some characteristics in common, 



Man-eating tigers are nearly always more cunning and more timid tban 

 other tigers. One does hear of exceptions showing amazing impudence — I 

 have heard of a tiger that ha<i a habit of charging a crowd in broad day- 

 light and carrying off the man in the centre — I suppose experience and 

 great natural sagacity taught him that that man was likely to be the fattest— 

 and that he would attack a squadron of cavalry as readily as a wedding 

 procession. I never came across this tiger myself, but I remember one 

 that used to blockade the high road until routed by the drivers of the mail 

 cart with a brilliant charge and some fluent Hindustani. After this although 

 he picked up two or three men in the jungle, he kept more or less in 

 seclusion for the rest of his life, which was about four or five weeks. 



As to the character of tigers iD general, the usual idea seems to be that a 

 tiger is a ferocious beast, and cowardly withal. I do not think so. He avoids 

 a fight it is true, except when driven into a corner, or stirred up and made to 

 walk over nearly red-hot rocks in the heat of a June aun ; but even then 

 he mostly only acts in self-defence. One would not call a horse a coward 

 because he had never killed a groom, and I don't see why we should argue 

 in that way of a tiger. All animals at one time, if we believe history on the 

 subject, stood in awe of the human species ; some of them show traces of that 

 feeling still, others have nearly, if not quite, lost it ; but there is none that 

 remembers that primitive standard of manners so clearly as the tiger. I 

 see no trace of it in the common ("domestic"?) cat, and none in the panther. 



This is clear, I think, if we observe the behaviour of young tigers, when 

 caught early, and kept tame. It is noticeable that this sense of respect 

 (reverence, or whatever it may be called) is mainly a male characteristic, and 

 does not appear in the female character, except in high-bred races and 

 individuals, and only in the very highest-bred individuals does it equal the 

 male. This is very noticeable among dogs and horses and is equally true of 

 the human species. But among tigers the female has not got much of this 

 quality, and is altogether a weaker animal than the male, and generally 

 inferior. It has been noticed by those who have kept tiger cubs, tame, that 

 the female becomes queer-tempered and dangerous long before the male, and 

 can rarely be left at liberty when more than a year old. So we generally 

 find that a tiger that has taken to man-killing is in most cases a female. I 

 do not wish to ignore the greater necessities of a female — the difficulty of 

 getting other food during gestation and when cubs are young— still I think 

 the cause is more in character than in circumstances. Among tigers, as 

 among human beings, there are some criminals, and among tigers the crime 

 takes the form of man-killing ; but such cases are rare. If we could take 



