THE MANCHURIAN TIGER 
T HE extent of country over which the Long-haired Manchurian 
or Siberian Tiger ( Felts tigris mongolica ) ranges can only be 
fixed approximately. Until recently, evidence was forth- 
coming of the existence of this animal only as far north as 
the Amur River; but I have been informed on good authority 
that workmen, employed on the construction of the new 
railway which the Russian Government is laying along that river, 
have killed several during the last year or two considerably further 
north than this. At any rate, one may safely assume that they are 
to be found from the Amur to the southern extremity of the Peninsula 
of Korea. 
I have heard it asserted that this tiger occurs in the Island of Saghalien, 
but all evidence I have been able to collect points to the contrary, I think 
conclusively. Careful statistics are kept by the Russian Government of all 
furs exported, and according to these no tiger skin has ever been taken 
from the island. Mr D , who for many years carried on a large 
fishing and trading business there, assured me he must have heard of it 
had a tiger been seen or shot in the island during the last five -and -twenty 
years, and a Monsieur L — , who spent a winter there, collecting general 
information on the island and its inhabitants for the French Geographical 
Society, and whom I had asked to make inquiries on the subject for me, 
failed to find any evidence of its occurrence there. 
Many skins find their way into the market at Pekin, chiefly through 
traders from the north and north-west, though how far west the range of 
this race extends is at present uncertain. 
Careful inquiries made in the summer of 1899 along the present route of 
the Siberian Railway, as far as Chita and Niertschinsk on the Amur and 
thence east along that river as far as Khabarovsk, elicited practically no 
information, and it was not till my arrival at Blagovastchinsk that I 
found a Mongolian hunter who had spent most of his life in country many 
marches to the south, who could give me anything approaching to first- 
hand news of the long-haired tiger. From him I learnt that he had seen a 
skin some years before, brought from far away to the south and east, but 
how far he could not say. 
I made further inquiries in vain on my passage down the Amur, and 
though I interviewed several intelligent isubra (wapiti) and bear hunters, 
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