CARNIVORA. 
31 
THE TIGER. LE TIGRE. 
Felts Tigris. 
Beneficence, however capriciously exercised, may 
be said occasionally to exhibit itself in the lion ; but 
the ferocious character of the tiger in its natural 
state presents no such palliation. When its appetite 
is satisfied, the former seems no longer delighted with 
blood; but butchery appears to afford gratification to 
the latter, even after its hunger has been satiated. 
This animal is met with occasionally in Africa, 
but it is the scourge of Asia and the Indian Islands. 
Equal to the lion in stature, though generally in- 
ferior in strength, it wants not courage and ferocity 
to attack that animal ; but although the combat is 
sometimes furious, it generally falls a victim to its 
temerity in so doing, unless some disparity of age or 
other circumstance should bring the strength and 
power of the two animals more to a level. Its swift- 
ness and strength enable it to seize a man while on 
horseback, and to drag, or rather to carry him in its 
mouth by bounds and leaps into a jungle or forest, 
in spite of all efforts to prevent it, short of musket- 
balls; indeed, the weight of a man, or even of a 
more ponderous animal, in its mouth, does not appear 
to incommode or delay the ordinary swiftness of the 
beast. 
