532 



UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 



nobler cousin. But even the "man-eaters", which at one time 

 undoubtedly accounted for a considerable number of the Indian 

 natives, must have been but a small percentage of the tigers 

 actually in existence. Of these once-dreaded marauders G. P. 

 Sanderson gives the following graphic account (in Thirteen Years 

 among the Wild Beasts of India): — "This truly terrible scourge 

 to the timid and unarmed inhabitants of an Indian village is now 

 happily becoming very rare; man-eaters of a bad type are seldom 



Fig. 1234. — Tl°;er [Fi'lis (igris) 



heard of, or, if heard of, rarely survive long. Before there were 

 so many European sportsmen as there now are in the country, a 

 man-eater frequently caused the temporary abandonment of whole 

 tracts; and the sites of small hamlets abandoned by the terrified 

 inhabitants, and which have never been reoccupied, are not 

 uncommonly met with by the sportsman in the jungles. The 

 terror inspired by a man-eater throughout the district ranged by 

 him is extreme. The helpless people are defenceless against his 

 attacks. Their occupations of cattle-grazing or wood-cutting take 

 them into the jungles, where they feel that they go with their lives 

 in their hands. A rustling leaf, or a squirrel or bird moving in 



