234 THE HIGHLANDS OF CBNTEAL INDIA 



his tongue was swollen and blue. We were nearly dead 

 ourselves, and went down to the water he had been making 

 for, while a messenger went to the village for more men — 

 the dozen lusty cattle-herds and my own men together 

 being totally unable to put him on the pad elephant to 

 carry home. An ordinary tiger will weigh about four 

 hundred and fifty or five hundred pounds, but this beef- 

 fed monster must have touched seven hundred pounds at 

 least ; and a tiger, from his length and suppleness, is a very 

 awkward object to lift ofE the ground. 



I have said that ten feet one inch is the length of an 

 unusually large tiger. The average length from nose to 

 tip of tail is only nine feet six inches for a full-grown male, 

 and for a tigress about eight feet four inches. The expe- 

 rience of all sportsmen I have met with, whose accuracy I 

 can rely on, is the same; and it will certainly be found, 

 when much greater measurements than this are recorded, 

 that they have either been taken from stretched skins or 

 else in a very careless fashion. The skin of a ten-feet tiger 

 will easily stretch to thirteen or fourteen feet, if required ; 

 and if natives are allowed to use the tape they are certain 

 to throw in a foot or two " to please master." Master also, 

 no doubt, sometimes pleases himself in a similar manner. 

 A well-known sportsman and writer whose recorded measure- 

 ments have done more to extend the size of the tiger than 

 anything else, informed me himself that all his measure- 

 ments were taken from flat skins. But the British public 

 demands twelve-feet tigers, just as it refuses to accept an 

 Indian landscape without palm-trees. So a swppressio 

 veri went forth ; and not only that, but his picture of a dead 

 tiger being carried into camp was improved by a few feet 

 being added to the length of the beast, while, to make 

 room for it, the most of the bearers were wiped out, leaving 

 about four men only to carry a tiger at least fifteen feet 

 long ! 



Sporting stories are apt to breed each other, incident 

 leading on to incident, so that I find I have already killed 

 some five or six tigers while yet only on the threshold of my 

 subject — discoursing of the prehminary exploration of the 

 tiger's haunts. I have Httle more to say on that matter, 



