MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 543 



In hunting a marked tiger everything depends on reliable information — but 

 things happen sometimes that scatter one's " facts" to the winds. The 1892 

 panther, when he found himself comfortably provided for with meat supplied 

 fresh every week in the same place, began to take advantage of the arrange- 

 ment, and fed there regularly until he was put in the bag. In 1895, when the 

 shikari had (or thought he had) got on the track of the old tigress, an animal 

 (presumably the said tigress) did the same thing, but, just as he was expecting 

 to get a shot, she (if it was she) disappeared, presumably for breeding 

 purposes. On continuing the hunt in 1896, in the same place, the tied-up 

 buffaloes were successively killed just as in the year before. Therefore the 

 shikari concluded that this was the man-eater, and that she had taken with 

 satisfaction to this easier mode of getting her living. He also noticed that 

 about this time an animal, which he supposed to be the old tigress, came 

 prowling round the buffalo nearly every night, to look at it if not to kill it. 

 One night he got a glimpse of it in the dusk, and it seemed to be certainly a 

 tiger. This went on until one night there was a kill, and the buffalo was 

 dragged past his tree in stages of 25 yards at a time. In the morning he 

 looked at it, and it showed, as they all said, the unmistakeable marks of a 

 tiger — the part eaten being the back of the thigh, near the tail. He sat up 

 that . night with a companion. At the first darkness of the sunset, before the 

 moon shone out clear, an animal came straight to the kill and began eating at 

 the same place as before, and his assistant killed it. In the morning this, 

 animal was found to be a small but powerful female panther. 



On dissection this animal was found to have had a heavy meal the night 

 before, from which the two or three mouthfuls it had taken just before it 

 was killed could be clearly distinguished. Here was a puzzle ! "Was this or 

 was it not the animal that had killed and dragged away the buffalo the night 

 before ? If it was, how did it do it, and why did it eat like a tiger ? If it 

 was not, how had it got the meal it had ? Why did it go so straight to the kill ? 

 And, lastly, what had become of the animal that had really killed the buffalo ? 



It seemed a hopeless puzzle. Everything had seemed so clear a few days 

 before, but now when the Forest Officer said he supposed he " knew all about 

 the man-eater now' 1 the shikari had to admit the truth, that " nobody in the 

 whole of the Central Provinces knew less about her than he did." 



The following week she was put in the bag — as stated above— and she was 

 settled — but the puzzle wasn't. 



Has anybody ever seen a leopard driven away from a kill by a hysena ? 

 Sitting over a kill one night I saw an animal feeding, and was just able with a 



glass to distinguish the spots of a leopard — a small one. It became uneasy 



there was a ferocious roaring, grunting and general fury, ending in a grand 

 charge and the flight of the first animal. In a minute, when the light was 

 clearer, I saw that the beast then at the kill was a hyaena. 



London, November, 1897. J. STRARER, f,z.s. 



