1839] 



in the Southern Mahratta Country. 



105 



The following particulars relative to the habits of the tiger were col- 

 lected during several years. 



The female has from 2 to 4 young, and does not breed at any particu~ 

 lar season. Their chief prey is cattle, but they also catch the wild hog, 

 the sambar, and, more rarely, the spotted deer. It is naturally a cowardly 

 animal and always retreats from opposition until wounded or provoked. 

 Several instances came to notice of its being compelled to relinquish 

 its prey by the cattle in a body driving it off. In one case an official 

 report was made of a herd of buffaloes rushing on a tiger that had seized 

 the herd-boy and forcing it to drop him. Its retiring from the wild 

 dog has already been adverted to. Though the wild hog often becomes 

 iis prey, it sometimes falls a victim to the successful resistance of the 

 wild boar. 1 once found a full grown tiger newly killed, evidently by 

 the rip of a boar's tusk ; and two similar instances were related to me, 

 by gentlemen who had witnessed them, one of a tiger the other of a 

 panther. It is generally believed that a tiger always kills his own 

 food and will not eat carrion. I met with one instance of a tigress and 

 two full grown cubs devouring a bullock that had died of disease. I 

 saw the carcass in the evening, and next day, on the report of tigers 

 having been heard in the night, I followed their track, and found they 

 bad dragged the dead animal into the centre of a corn-field and pick- 

 ed the bones quite clean, after which they found a buffalo, killed it, 

 and eat only a smill portion of it. Another instance was related in a 

 letter from a celebrated sportsman in Kandeish, who having killed a 

 tigress, on his return to his tents, sent a pad elephant to bring it 

 home. The messenger returned reporting that on his arrival he found 

 her alive. They went out next morning to the spot and discovered 

 that she had been dragged into a ravine by another tiger and half the 

 carcass devoured. They found him close by and killed him also. 



The Bheels in Kandeish say, that in the monsoon, when food is scarce, 

 the tiger feeds on frogs, and an instance occurred some years ago, in 

 that province, of one being killed in a state of extreme emaciation, from 

 a porcupine's quill that had passed through his gullett and prevented 

 his swallowing, and which had probably been planted there, in his at- 

 tempts to make one of these animalsfhis prey. 



Many superstitious ideas prevail j among the natives regarding the 

 tiger. They imagine that an additional lobe is added to his liver every 

 year; that his flesh possesses many medicinal qualities ; that his claws 

 arranged together so as to form a circle, and hung round a childs neck, 

 preserves it from the effect of the evil eye. That the whiskers constitute a 

 deadly poison, which for this reason are carefully burnt off, the instant 

 the animal is killed. Several of the lower castes eat his flesh. 



