THE CAT TRIBE 43 
Photo by Fratelli Alinar:] [Florencs 
A TIGER BEFORE SLEEPING 
Tigers, when about to sleep, sit in this position; when more drowsy, they lie down or roli over on their backs 
Valley he shot three of these tigers in a day, putting them up in thick bush-scrub by the 
aid of dogs. 
The Royat BENGAL TicEr, so called, and very properly called in the old books of natural 
history, is a different and far more savage beast. It is almost zzvariadly a ferocious savage, 
fierce by nature, never wishing to be otherwise than a destroyer—of beasts mainly, but often of 
men. Compared with the lion, it is far longer, but rather lighter, for the lion is more massive 
and compact. “A well-grown tigress,” says Sir Samuel Baker, “ may weigh on an average 240 
lbs. live weight. A very fine tiger may weigh 440 lbs., but if fat the same tiger would weigh 500 
lbs. There may be tigers which weigh 50 lbs. more than this; but I speak according to my 
experience. I have found that a tiger of 9 feet 8 inches is about 2 inches above the average. 
The same skin may be stretched to measure 10 feet. A tiger in the Zoological Gardens is a long, 
lithe creature with little flesh. Such a specimen affords a poor example of this grand animal in 
its native jungles, with muscles in their full, ponderous development from continual exertion in 
nightly travels over long distances, and in mortal struggles when wrestling with its prey. A well- 
fed tiger is by no means a slim figure. On the contrary, it is exceedingly bulky, broad in the 
shoulders, back, and loins, and with an extraordinary girth of limbs, especially in the forearms 
and wrists.” 
This ponderous, active, and formidably armed creature is, as might be expected, able to hold 
its own wherever Europeans do not form part of the regular population. In India the peasants 
are quite helpless even against a cattle-killing tiger in a populous part of the country. In the 
large jungles, and on the islands at the mouths of the great rivers, the tigers have things all their 
own way. Things are no better in the Far East. A large peninsula near Singapore is said to 
