as 
CARNIVORA. 
Mr. Marsden informs us, that the tigers in Su- 
matra prove to the inhabitants there, both in their 
journeys and even their domestic occupations, most 
fatal and destructive enemies. The number of people 
usually slain by these rapacious tyrants of the woods 
is almost incredible. Whole villages are sometimes 
depopulated by them. Yet, from a superstitious pre- 
judice, it is with difficulty they are prevailed upon, 
by a large reward which the India Company offers, 
to use methods of destroying them, till they have 
sustained some particular injury in their own family 
or kindred, and their ideas of fatalism contribute 
to render them insensible to the risk. Their traps, 
of which they can make variety, are very ingeniously 
contrived. Sometimes they are in the nature of 
strong cages, with falling doors, into which the beast 
is enticed by a goat or dog inclosed as a bait. Some- 
times they manage so, that a large beam is made to fall 
in a groove across the tiger’s back ; at other times it 
is noosed about the loins with strong ratans, or led 
to ascend a plank, nearly balanced, which, turning 
when it has passed the centre, lets the animal fall 
upon sharp stakes prepared below. Instances have 
occurred of a tiger being caught by one of the for- 
mer modes, which had many marks in its body of the 
partial success of this last expedient. The tigers of 
Sumatra are very large and strong. They are said 
to break the leg of a horse or buffalo with a stroke of 
the fore-paw, and the largest prey they kill is, with- 
out difficulty, dragged by them into the woods. 
This they usually perform on the second night, being 
