540 JO URN A L, BOMB A Y NA TURA L HIS TOR Y SOCIETY, Vol. XI. 



rapidly than usual. After this she began to go about with a very big power- 

 ful young male tiger, supposed to be a grown-up cub of hers, and made him 

 provide for her, and bullied him ferociously if he tried to get a bit of meat 

 before she had finished. He killed game, cattle, and occasionally a tied-up 

 buffalo, but never a human being. There seemed a danger, from the com- 

 pany he had kept, that he might take to man-killing afterwards, especially as 

 he went about in an awful temper for some days when bereaved of his un- 

 prepossessing parent, but for some months after her death there was - not a case 

 reported. So it seemed clear that he at any rate was free from the family 

 failing. She was a big clumsy tigress, heavy in the back and shoulders, but 

 comparatively weak in the hind legs, with a skinny neck and a very small 

 sneaking-looking head. She had a paw twisted, but this was stated by an 

 anatomist to be a congenital deformity and not the result of an injury. 



She was extremely cunning and timid, very careful to keep out of sight, 

 and never showed herself, if she could help it, even to a single native. Once 

 in her life she showed a suggestion of fight, when she threatened to charge 

 Colonel Pollock three times in one morning. She didn't charge up to him, 

 but she did show herself for a moment, and it was a most unusually vigorous 

 demonstration for her. 



She was a very sly beast, and during the four years of her celebrity had 

 been hunted as often as any animal of her tribe in the whole of India, and 

 accordingly understood the local system of shikar {viz., beating) as thoroughly 

 as nine shikaries out of ten. She had one or two stock tricks that hardly 

 ever failed. 



When she killed a tied-up buffalo, instead of sleeping heavily near the kill, 

 she seemed (if she stayed near it at all) to keep her ears very wide open, and 

 when the shikaries came to see what had become of the buffalo, she knew that 

 those stealthy steps and whispers were the prelude to a beat, with crowds, 

 howls, tom-toms, and rifles, all complete. So she lay still until the steps of 

 the shikari had died away in the distance, and he was well on his road to tell 

 his master where she was and where she could be bagged, and all about it : 

 then she rose and placed herself well outside the area of the intended beat ; 

 just over the ridge of the hill for choice. Then, I suppose, she lay down and 

 enjoyed the view, and studied the devices of the Sahibs for future guidance. 



But no man-eater is always right, and it did happen that she got enclosed 

 in a beat two or three times. Then her plan (at least after she got experience) 

 was simply to refuse to go forward, but break out at the side, stops or no 

 stops. 



Her tricks got so well known at last that the people who knew her best said 

 it was a waste of time to beat for her, for she never could be got in a beat. 

 That was quite true of any place within twenty miles except one : 

 Chauki kho Nallih, a place with cliffs at the sides, in places 30 feet high, and 

 quite perpendicular, with only about three outlets, each of which could be 



