MISCELLAISIEOUS NOTES. 
793 
^Ir. Dunbar Brander wTiting to us in regard to this says : — 
“ The tiger’s noise is a mate call pure and simple, although very 
like a low sambhar bell no sambhar would mistake it. I have had a tiger 
make it at me when I walked him ofiE his kill in long grass and he 
thought I was his mate.” 
Major C. H. Stockley gives us the following experience : — 
“ Walking along a forest track in upper Burma in July 1914 about 
11 a.m. I came to a small tract of open tree and grass jimgle bordering 
a deep ravine into which several small gullies ran from my direction. 
From the direction of the ravine I heard what I took to be a sambhar 
call, when I was only 40 yards from it. I walked towards it hoping to see 
a stag, when suddenly the call came from a small gully 15 yards away. 
I could not see the bottom but it looked much too small to hold a 
sambhar. I moved cautiously forward and found it was only three feet 
deep with a sandy bottom in which were the pug marks of a large tiger : 
the sand was still running down into them. I followed them to the 
main ra\nne and found the tiger had then gallopped off along the 
bottom. I surmise that he had heard me coming along the track, called, 
and then sneaked up the gully towards me thinking it was game (a cow 
tsaine perhaps) approaching, discovered his mistake and bolted. The call 
was quite possibly to attract his mate.” 
Lt.-Col. E. W. Burton in episiola says on this subject : — 
“ That tigers make a ‘ Sambhar-hke-call ’ has been noticed in the 
Journal of the Society (Vol. XXI, page 235) by writers from both India 
and Burma. Vide Vol. XXI, page 235, where Major H. H. Harington 
writes that it is a well known fact in Burma that tigers often ‘ call ’ 
like a .sambhar and he gives an experience of his own. Mr. J. W. Best 
also relates an occasion on which in the Central Provinces of India he 
actually saw a tigress making a noise which he at first thought to come 
from a sambhar. Mr. Copley now writing from the Central Provinces 
describes the ‘ call ’ and gives an interesting description of it as 
compared with that of the sambhar, both being heard at the same time, 
and thinks it must be a ‘ mate ’ call. 
I have on two occasions heard tigers make the ‘ Sambhar-like-call ’ 
(1912 Eastern Ghats) and agree with Mr. Copley that the call would 
not, probably, deceive an animal. No doubt the denizens of the jungle 
very readily recognise it for the imitation that it is : but Mr. Copley’s 
conjectme as to its being a ‘ mate ’ call is not borne out by the circum- 
stances related by the two writers previously quoted. So far as I know 
there was no tiger any where near when I heard the ‘ call ’ which was 
several times ’•epeated and it seemed to be a ‘ hrmting ’ note : perhaps 
tigers think themselves to be better mimics than tney are. 
It may be that animal curiosity causes sambhar to tarry in the vicinity 
and so enable the questing tiger, having ‘ called ’ in one direction, to slip 
round and gain a nearer approach. 
It is not difficult to call up ‘Kakur ’ (Muntjac) by means of a blade of 
grass or a leaf placed between the thumbs and blown upon edgewa 3 's. 
Moose are ‘called up’ as is weU known. Certain tribes in India — snarers 
of animals — can call up jackals to within a few yards. Such incidents can 
be added to from many parts of the world, so whj' should not the tiger 
have acquired the habit of caUing up a prospective dinner or at least 
inducing it to stay a while from headlong flight.- 
