383 

 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



No. I.— TIGERS IN TREES. 



There is a considerable literature on the subject of tigers climbin.f trees to 

 be found in old Sporting Magazines, although I can discover in our Journal 

 only one reference to such an occurrence, recorded by Mr. Monteath in Vo- 

 lume XXVI, No. 3. Such bemg the case and the magazines in question bein" 

 very difficult to obtam, it is perhaps worth collecting all that can be found on 

 the subject. 



In the Bengal Sporting Magazine for 1834 it is recorded that a tiger, struck 

 on the back of the head by a bullet on the previous evening, was found quite 

 dead on the lower branch of a pipal tree at least fifteen feet from the ground. 

 The marks of his claws on the bark were so clear that there could be no difficulty 

 in deciding that he had scrambled up cat-fashion. He then ran alone the 

 branch, at the extremity of which he lay down across it, iiLs legs on either side 

 bemg kept in balance by small twigs, there he died. This animal had not 

 attained his full gro\vth. An instance is given in the Bengal Quarterly Sporting 

 Revieiv for 1843 of a hunted tigi'ess mounting to a bough twenty and a half feet 

 from the ground to seize a man, the man was wounded and the tigress then 

 lost her balance and fell. 



In 1856 " Teutonius " recorded two such instances in the India Sporting 

 Revieiv. In the first case he had news of a tiger sitting in a tree where it was 

 said to be blockaded by villagers. He rode to the place, which was within five 

 hundred yards of a village, and there saw a large pipal tree round which 

 people were picketed. A spearman was standing almost underneath it. When he 

 approached within a hundred yards of the tree " there appeared, standtag on 

 a sturdy branch high aloft in the tree, the tiger, erect and calm and fearless 

 ^^ith black, yellow and white colours in stripes, looking beautiful in high relief". 

 The height of the animal above the ground was found to be twenty-five feet 

 when subsequently measured. On receiving a shot he caught a lower branch 

 with his two arms in falling, hung for a minute and then dropped dead. The 

 villagers had found the animal in the morning asleep under a mango tree. 

 On being roused he at first tried to hide liimself in the drain of a tank, 

 and eventually mounted the tree, Avhich from its size and low stout branches 

 was easy of ascent. They said that once during the day he tried to descend , 

 but that he was driven higher up by then- shouts. This was a young tiger 

 about eight feet in length. 



The second case, which was very similar, occurred on the 17th May 1856 

 near the village of Tuchezra. A tiger attacked a buffalo near the village at 

 about daybreak, but was driven off by the herdboy. The villagers then turned 

 out and the tiger got up a pipal tree, where a dozen villagers remamed to prevent 

 it getting down. The sportsman approached to withm forty yards, mounted 

 on an elephant, and related that as he stood up ui the howdah with his riflo 

 levelled at the tiger's chest, it appeared to be a few feet higher than the rifle 

 and he calculated it to be about nineteen feet. The tiger, which was killed 

 wdth three shots, proved to be a inale measuring nine feet eleven mches. How 

 he got up the tree I could not weU make out, as Avith the exception of an 

 intervening branch, and many large notches, the trunk, measurmg in cu-cum- 

 ference at least 38 feet, was at least fourteen feet high, and then branched 

 out like a banyan tree, and there was plenty of room where he could stand and 

 lie.". 



In Volume I, No. 5, of the Oriental Sporting Magazine for 1866, it is related 

 that a herd of buffaloes drove a wounded tiger into a rhododendron tree, but 

 no other particulars are given. In Volume IV, No. 41, of the same magazmo 



