512 CARNIVORA 
but some specimens reach to 12 feet. The female is somewhat 
smaller, and has a lighter and narrower head. The Tiger has no 
mane, but in old males the hair of the cheeks is rather long and 
spreading. The ground colour of the upper and outer parts of the 
head, body, limbs, and tail is a bright rufous fawn, and these parts 
ave beautifully marked with transverse stripes of a dark, almost 
black colour. The markings vary much in different individuals, 
and even on the two sides of the same individual. The under 
parts of the body, the inside of the limbs, the cheeks, and a large 
spot over each eye are nearly white. The Tigers which inhabit 
Via, 225.—The Tiger (Felis tigris). 
hotter regions, as Bengal and the south Asiatic islands, have shorter 
and smoother hair, and are more richly coloured and distinctly 
striped than those of Northern China and Siberia, in which the fur 
is longer, softer, and lighter coloured. 
The Tiger is exclusively Asiatic, but has a very wide range in 
that continent, having been found in almost all suitable localities 
south of a line drawn from the river Euphrates, passing along the 
southern shores of the Caspian and Sea of Aral by Lake Baikal to 
the Sea of Okhotsk. Its most northern range is the territory 
of the Amur, its most southern the islands of Sumatra, Java, and 
Bali. Westward it reaches to Turkish Georgia and eastward to 
the island of Saghalin. It is absent, however, from the great 
elevated plateau of Central Asia, nor does it inhabit Ceylon, 
