Of all sports tiger shooting affords the most lasting satisfaction, and it is especially interesting when one lives in tigerish localities where one has more leisure and opportunity for going into all the details of this delightful sport, and where a knowledge of the people and their language makes the sport so much more agreeable, and one’s acquaintance with the ground enables one to take an active and intelligent part in regulating the plan of operations when a tiger has killed.  Then in the case of an animal so destructive it is seldom possible to feel any commiseration, though I have done so on certainly one, or perhaps two occasions.  Against many sports something may be said, but that is impossible as regards tiger shooting.  The tying out of live baits may be objected to, but after all the tooth of the tiger is to be preferred to the knife of the butcher.

FOOTNOTES: 

[15] G. P. Sanderson’s “Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India,” 1878.

[16] “Reminiscences of Life in Mysore, South Africa and Burmah.”  By Major-General R. S. Dobbs.  London, Hatchards, Piccadilly, 1882.

[17] Vide Appendix C.

[18] “Oriental Field Sports.”  By Captain Thomas Williamson, London, 1807.

[19] “Tiger Shooting in India; Experiences 1850 to 1854,” by William Rice, 1857.

[20] “My Indian Journal.”  By Colonel Walter Campbell.  Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas, 1864.

CHAPTER V.

BEARS—­PANTHERS—­WILD BOARS—­JUNGLE DOGS—­SNAKES—­JUNGLE PETS.

The Indian black bear (ursus labiatus), we are informed by Jerdon, is found throughout India and Ceylon, from Cape Comorin to the Ganges, chiefly in the hilly and jungly districts.  The bear, unlike the tiger, which has sometimes five cubs, appears never to have more than two cubs, and I have not been able to hear or read of their ever having more.  We have no means of knowing how often they breed, but I imagine that they must seldom do so, and that that is why they are so soon almost exterminated.  As I never kept a game diary on my estate (which I now much regret), I have no idea how many have been killed from it, but I am sure we have killed a smaller number of bears than of tigers, and yet the bear is now rarely seen or heard of in my neighbourhood, while we hear as much of tigers as ever, and indeed quite recently a great deal more, for last year they were apparently more numerous than they have ever been in the tiger range of my district; and I say apparently, because, from the destruction of game, the tigers have naturally been compelled to live more upon cattle.  It is alleged by the natives that the tigers kill and eat the bears.  Mr. Sanderson notices this in his work, and gives one reported instance of it, but I have never known of one in my part of the country.  A friend of mine, formerly in the employ of the Mysore