THE POIVER OF SCENT IN WILD ANIMALS. 113 



finally mustering up sufficient pluck to satisfy his hunger. Even after 

 commencing to feed he had, seemingly, had one or two bad frights as he 

 had rushed headlong from the body more than once prior to his being 

 disturbed by the Mikers in the morning. 



In this case there can be no doubt that the tiger had relied entirely on 

 his sense of hearing so that until lie actually struck the man down he had 

 no idea that he was attacking anything more formidable than deer or 

 some other of his usual game. When he found what he had done he was 

 at first smitten with terror, but later, failing to kill anything else, he was 

 tempted to go back and investigate and then by degrees hunger overcame 

 his natural fear of man and he commenced the meal which eventually 

 turned him into the boldest and most clever man-eater I have known. 



On one occasion when walking through the forest with a shot gun and 

 accompanied by some terriers I came on this oame tiger standing some five 

 yards away, listening with ears pricked up and eyes staring towards me, but 

 evidently not using his sense of smell at all. The small dogs routed him 

 for a time but that evening he returned and killed a cooli within a few feet 

 of where I had been standing. 



On yet another occasion I saw him as I was coming up a pathway leading 

 from my office to my bungalow. The pathway was cut on the side of a 

 sloping hill, covered with sun grass from three to four feet high, and sud- 

 denly down below me I caught sight of the tiger moving along a track made 

 by the school boys taking a short cut to the school house fifty yards away 

 down the bill. It was about three o'clock on a sunny afternoon and the 

 school was in full swing, the boys after the manner of all small Indian 

 school boys, hard at work reciting loudly the lessons they were learning, 

 making a perfect babel of noise. The tiger was slinking along this track, 

 his attention entirely fixed on the sound in front of him and evidently 

 gloating over a hoped for easily won meal, not the first obtained in similar 

 circumstances. I was not thirty yards from him and the wind was blowing 

 steadily from me to him, but he seemed utterly unconscious of my presence 

 until turning my foot in the gravelly soil I made a sound which attracted 

 his attention. One glimpse of my white sola-topee, evidently a most 

 dangerous enemy in his opinion, was enough for him and he quickly and 

 quietly slunk away into some jungle and when, a few seconds later, my 

 chaprassie came running up with my rifle he was no longer to be 

 found. 



Once, however, I was even nearer than this to a tiger without his being 

 able to smell me. At the time I was out after Sambhur and was sneaking 

 along a deep nullah running through some open bamboo forest, here and 

 there dotted with small but very dense Ber bushes. It was just as dawn 

 was breaking and in the deep hollow the light was still very dim as I 

 dodged from one clump of bushes to another. As I got to one of these 

 clumps I heard something more on the far side and shake the bush, very 

 much as if a deer was feeding on the Ber berries and shaking the branches 

 as he pulled at them. I was just about to step from behind the bush 

 when I heard a deep '^ Aough h h " and of course at once realized that 

 my supposed deer was a tiger. There may have been five or six feet 

 between us, certainly not more and though I could smell the tiger strongly 

 he evidently was very doubtful about me and kept inhaling long breaths 

 in the attempt to make out what I was. Finally, deciding it was some- 

 thing suspicious, he began to trot away in the opposite direction and as I 

 stepped from behind the bush raced up the bank giving me a snap-shot 

 which luckily spined him and rolled him over. He had originally come 

 up to the bush from the opposite direction to myself and was apparently 

 lying beside it when the sound of my approach roused him up. 

 15 



