114 JOUBNAL, BOMBAY NATUBAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVII. 



On yet another occasion I lay for some minutes on a sandbank within 

 25 yards of a tigress as she drank, and she calmly alternately lapped and 

 cleaned herself without anj' suspicions of my presence before she eventually 

 put herself into a satisfactory position for a shot and I was able to termi- 

 nate the interview. 



Most sportsmen who have sat up for tiger, whether on mychauns com- 

 paratively high up or actually on the ground behind screens, know that 

 it really matters little which way the wind blows as far as frightening the 

 tiger goes but that, on the other hand, the most absolute silence is essential. 



A clever tiger who lies up any where within hearing distance of his kill 

 over which a mychaun has been erected, will never return to it, however 

 hungry he may be, unless he has heard the last — as far as he can tell — of 

 his persecutors clear off. A very good instance of this was given me by 

 Mr, G. M. Peddie of the Assam Bengal Railway. A tiger had been 

 regularly killing cattle and goats belonging to his coolies and every 

 attempt to shoot it had failed. Time after time Mr. Peddie had had 

 mychauns made over the kill and at other times when a tree with a con- 

 venient branch was handy had gone out by himself with one gun bearer 

 and climbed on to the perch and waited. Whatever his arrangements were, 

 however, the result was always the same — no tiger, — yet a visit the follow- 

 ing morning generally showed that after he had gone the tiger had returned 

 and made a hearty meal. 



Happening to pass through Mr. Peddie's camp at this time he told me of 

 his failures and said that he thought the tiger must be able to smell him, 

 I advised him the next time he went out to take a number of men 

 with him, let them make as much noise as they liked whilst he climbed up 

 to his mychaun and, after he had settled himself comfortably, to let them 

 go away still talking as they went. 



Within two days I got a letter to say that the tiger had been bagged. 

 Mr. Peddie had followed my suggestions with the result that immediately 

 the coolies who had come with him to the kill had noisely retired for 

 about a couple of hundred yards, the tiger had sneaked out, walked 

 round the far side of the kill listening to the men in the dis- 

 tance, followed them slowly up and, finally, after he thought 

 he had heard them off the premises returned to his dinner and was 

 promptly shot with a single bullet through heart and lungs, Mr. 

 Peddie told me that judging from the action of the tiger he followed the 

 men almost entirely by sound though every few paces he put his nose to 

 the ground and inhaled a deep breath as if getting a whiff of the trail left 

 by the men. At the same time invariably after one of these inhalations 

 he finished by cocking his ears and listening intently as if to verify his 

 poor sense of smell by his outer sense of hearing. 



The trick of making a very noisy approach to a kill and an even more 

 noisy departure, so that the fact that one or more persons have been left 

 behind may not be detected, is of course a very old one. It had been 

 taught me by my father but has often proved effective within my own 

 experience. 



Of course I must not be understood to claim that tigers have no sense 

 of smell. Some they have, though it is not acute, and an incident 

 in the career of the man-eater already referred to proves this. My Head 

 Quarters were at the time at a place called Gunjong in the North Cachar 

 Hills, right away on the North-East Frontier of India where tigers — like 

 he poor— were always with us. They often came near the house, more- 

 han once kiUed my animals in their stables and I had already killed on& 

 iger within a stone's throw of my garden. On the occasion referred to, 

 a tiger had two nights running passed along by the narrow path on the 



