44 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
have been almost abandoned by its cultivators lately, owing to the loss of life caused by the 
tigers. In the populous parts of India the tiger is far more stealthy than in the out-of-the-way 
districts. It only hunts by night; and after eating a part of the animal killed, moves off toa 
distance, and does not return. Otherwise the regular habit is to return to the kill just at or after 
dusk, and finish the remainder. Its suspicions seem quite lulled to sleep after dark. Quite 
recently a sportsman sat up to watch for a tiger at a water-hole. It was in the height of the 
Indian hot season, when very little water was left. All the creatures of that particular neigh- 
bourhood were in the habit of coming to drink at one good pool still left in the rocky bed of the 
river. There the tigers came too. The first night they did not come until all the other creatures 
—hog, deer, peacocks, and monkeys—had been down to drink. They then came so softly over 
the sand that the gunner in waiting did not hear them pass. His first knowledge that they were 
there was due to the splashing they made as they entered the water. It was quite dark, and he 
felt not a little nervous, for the bush on which he was seated on a small platform was only some 
10 feet high. He heard the two tigers pass him, not by their footsteps, but by the dripping of 
the water as it ran off their 
bodies on to the sand. Next 
night they came again. This 
time, though it was dark, he 
shot one in a very ingenious 
manner. The two tigers 
walked into the water, and 
apparently lay down or sat 
down in it, with their heads 
out. They only moved occa- 
sionally, lapping the water, 
but did not greatly disturb 
the surface. On this was re- 
flected a bright star from the 
sky above. The sportsman 
put the sight of the rifle on 
the star, and kept it up to his 
shoulder. Something obliter- 
A 
Photo i Scholastic Photo, Co.] 7 = - [Parson's Gres. ted th t d ke i t tl 
A HALF-GROWN TIGER CUB ee ore oe 
Tigers <‘ grow to their head,”” like children. The head of a half-grown cub is as long, though fired. The « something was 
not so broad, as that of the adult the tiger’s head, which the 
bullet duly hit. 
The hill-tigers of India are, or were, much more given to hunting by day than the jungle- 
tigers. In the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India the late General Douglas Hamilton said that before 
night the tigers were already about hunting, and that in the shade of evening it was dangerous 
to ride on a pony—not because the tigers wished to kill the rider, but because they might mis- 
take the pony and its rider for a sambar deer. He was stalked like this more than once. Often, 
when stalking sambar deer and ibex by day, he saw the tigers doing the same, or after other 
prey. “My brother Richard,” he writes, “ was out after a tiger which the hillmen reported had 
killed a buffalo about an hour before. He saw the tiger on first getting to the ground, and the 
tiger had seen him. It was lying out in the open watching the buffalo, and shuffled into the 
wood, and would not come out again. Next morning, when we got to the ground, the tiger 
was moving from rock to rock, and had dragged the body into a nullah. . . . We were upon 
the point of starting home when we observed a number of vultures coming down to the carcase. 
The vultures began to collect in large numbers on the opposite hill. I soon counted fifty; but 
they would not go near the buffalo. Then some crows, bolder than the rest, flew down, and 
