160 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



but they begged that he would demand anything rather than this 

 skull, and he therefore did not push the request. 



Thus we have in North- West Borneo a tradition of the existence 

 of the tiger common to several widely-separated and very distinct 

 tribes, and we have this skull preserved with so much veneration 

 at Siiigghi. Now, if this skull were proved to be in a fossil condi- 

 tion, there would be little difficulty in accepting Mr. Wallace's 

 suggestion that the animal in question once had its place in the 

 Bornean fauna and has recently become extinct. But until such 

 proof is obtained, it is equally possible that the skull was brought 

 from Java and made an heirloom of (as is the Dyak custom), at the 

 time when western Borneo was subject to Majapait, when the 

 intercourse of the D} r aks with Java seems to have been both fre- 

 quent and considerable. And in this case, the traditions above 

 noted might be explained as having been derived either from the 

 report of tigers seen in Java and the Peninsula by natives of 

 Borneo casually visiting those districts in comparatively recent 

 times ; or as handed down from the original colonists of Malayan 

 stock who peopled the North-West Coast and to whom the animal 

 would have been familiar. 



Since writing the above, I find that Burns, in his account of 

 the Kayans of the Eejang river (Logan's Journal, 1849), states 

 that these people have a proper name for the tiger, which animal 

 thev describe as being of large size, and which they persist in saying 

 does exist in several districts of the interior. 



