The carrying power of tigers is very great, and has often been remarked on, but it has been doubted whether they often carry off an animal without some part of it dragging on the ground.  Mr. Sanderson gives some instances of their doing so; and I have known of one instance in my neighbourhood where a tiger after killing a bullock took it into the jungle and carried the carcase along the trunk of a tree which had fallen across a ravine.  But considering its size, the dragging power of a panther is much more remarkable, and it seems to carry off a bullock as easily as a tiger does.  On one occasion a panther killed a donkey close to my bungalow, and carried it off, and had even attempted to jump up the bank of an old ditch with it, which was five or six feet high, but had failed in the attempt and abandoned the carcase.  But why the panther did not drag the donkey down to another part of the jungle, where it could easily have dragged the carcase into it, is difficult to conceive, unless we suppose that these animals have not, after the failure of one plan, mind enough to try another.  Perhaps this is so, or that they take the pet in a case of failure and go off in disgust.  I imagine that this kind of feeling must influence tigers, for I once found an uneaten carcase of a bullock wedged between two rocks.  A tiger had killed, high up on a mountain side, and taken the carcase into the nearest ravine, evidently with the view of dragging it towards the water further down the hill.  On his way he had to pass through a narrow passage between two rocks, and here the carcase stuck fast, and he had in vain tried to pull it through, but it had never occurred to him to pull it out backwards (which he might easily have done when the carcase was only slightly wedged) and try another route.  But, after all, we must not be surprised, at this, as even the human animal does not always readily find the solution of a fresh difficulty.  Tigers, it is well known, are good swimmers, and seem to have no difficulty in taking the carcase of a bullock with them, if I may judge by the fact, which was told me by a friend, that a tiger once swam eighty yards across a river in the northern part of Mysore, taking with it the carcase of a newly killed bullock.

Tiger shooting in the Western Ghauts is always carried out without the aid of elephants, and it is seldom that one can obtain, even for the first shot, a fairly safe position.  Colonel Peyton, whom I have previously quoted, says that a man is not safe under sixteen feet from the ground, but it is seldom that such an elevation can be obtained, as the country is so steep that, though you have a fair drop on the lower side of the tree, a tiger from the upper side may easily spring on to you, and is then generally on your level, or even higher.  Of course you select a tree where, in theory, the tiger must come on the lower side, but tigers will often take most eccentric courses, and last year, after having taken up a position on a tree