200 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



reading of an instance. Two hunters were going through a 

 fringe of jungle land when one of them stopped dead and said 

 to the other, "Look, there's a tiger!" "Where?" asked the other. 

 "There, don't you see him," said the first pointing at the 

 same time to a clump of reeds only a very few yards distant. 

 But the second man could see nothing but reeds. Nor did 

 he, till a movement of the beast, who was beginning to be 

 uneasy under the direct look of the human eye, showed his 

 shape. Then the wonder was jxtst as it is in a puzzle 

 picture how anyone could possibly have missed seeing 

 him. The fact, however, remains, that not merely man, 

 but even the keen-sighted denizens of the jungle such as 

 deer, antelopes, boars, and the like are also unable to dis- 

 tinguish the alternate tawny and black stripes, so perfectly 

 do they resemble the dried up yellow reed stalks and the 

 dark shadows between. It seems doubtful whether China 

 suffers in her manhood from tigers to the extent that India 

 does. If she does, we do not hear of it. In India the loss 

 of human life due to this cause is tremendous. Whole dis- 

 tricts are depopulated sometimes, first owing to the number 

 of deaths, a single man-eater having been known to kill 

 nearly 100 persons in a year, and then by the abandonment 

 of the group of villages near which the terror resides. Much 

 of this is due to a superstition from which the Chinese are 

 practically exempt. The Indian fears to kill a tiger. There 

 is nothing the Chinese like better. Alive, a tiger takes toll 

 of flocks and herds: dead, he pays all the taxes for a 

 decade. Hence, probably a Chinese " man-eater" has short 

 shrift. Even bounty for killing tigers in India will not 

 tempt some natives to compass their death, so strong are 

 superstitious beliefs connected with them. 



