r, the latter still
alive and a keen shot, were noted sportsmen at a time when game was
more plentiful, shooting more generally practised, and when to be a
good shot meant more than average excellence. The two brothers between
them have shot, I daresay, more than four hundred and fifty male and
female tigers, and serried rows of skulls ranged round the
billiard-rooms in their respective factories, bear witness to their
love of sport and the deadly accuracy of their aim. Under their
auspices I began my tiger shooting, and as they knew every inch of the
jungles, had for years been observant students of nature, were
acquainted with all the haunts and habits of every wild creature, I
acquired a fund of information about the tiger which I knew could be
depended on. It was the result of actual observation and experience,
and in most instances it was corroborated by my own experience in my
more limited sphere of action. Every incident I adduce, every
deduction I draw, every assertion I make regarding tigers and tiger
shooting can be plentifully substantiated, and abundantly testified
to, by my brother sportsmen of Purneah and Bhaugulpore. From their
valuable information I have got most of the material for this part of
my book.

Of the order FERAE, the family _felidae_, there is perhaps no animal
in the wide range of all zoology, so eminently fitted for destruction
as the tiger. His whole structure and appearance, combining beauty and
extreme agility with prodigious strength, his ferocity, and his
cunning, mark him out as the very type of a beast of prey. He is the
largest of the cat tribe, the most formidable race of quadrupeds on
earth. He is the most bloodthirsty in habit, and the most dreaded by
man. Whole tracts of fertile fields, reclaimed from the wild
luxuriance of matted jungle, and waving with golden grain, have been
deserted by the patient husbandmen, and allowed to relapse into
tangled thicket and uncultured waste on account of the ravages of this
formidable robber. Whole villages have been depopulated by tigers, the
mouldering door-posts, and crumbling rafters, met with at intervals in
the heart of the solitary jungle, alone marking the spot where a
thriving hamlet once sent up the curling smoke from its humble
hearths, until the scourge of the wilderness, the dreaded 'man-eater,'
took up his station near it, and drove the inhabitants in terror from
the spot. Whole herds of valuable cattle have been literally dest