abled that it requires little
further effort to complete the work of slaughter.

Two friends of mine once shot an enormous old tiger on a small island
in the middle of the river, during the height of the annual rains. The
brute had lost nearly all its hair from mange, and was an emaciated
sorry-looking object. From the remains on the island--the skin,
scales, and bones--they found that he must have slain and eaten
several alligators during his enforced imprisonment on the island.
They will eat alligators when pressed by hunger, and they have been
known to subsist on turtles, tortoises, iguanas, and even jackals.
Only the other day in Assam, a son of Dr. B. was severely mauled by a
tiger which sprang into the verandah after a dog. There were three
gentlemen in the verandah, and, as you may imagine, they were taken
not a little by surprise. They succeeded in bagging the tiger, but not
until poor B. was very severely hurt.

After tearing the throat open, they walk round the prostrate carcase
of their prey, growling and spitting like 'tabby' cats. They begin
their operations in earnest, invariably on the buttock. A leopard
generally eats the inner portion of the thigh first. A wolf tears open
the belly, and eats the intestines first. A vulture, hawk, or kite,
begins on the eyes; but a tiger invariably begins on the buttocks,
whether of buffalo, cow, deer, or pig. He then eats the fatty covering
round the intestines, follows that up with the liver and udder, and
works his way round systematically to the fore-quarters, leaving the
head to the last. It is frequently the only part of an animal that
they do not eat.

A 'man-eater' eats the buttocks, shoulders, and breasts first. So many
carcases are found in the jungle of animals that have died from
disease or old age, or succumbed to hurts and accidents, that the
whitened skeletons meet the eye in hundreds. But one can always tell
the kill of a tiger, and distinguish between it and the other bleached
heaps. The large bones of a tiger's kill are always broken. The broad
massive rib bones are crunched in two as easily as a dog would snap
the drumstick of a fowl. Vultures and jackals, the scavengers of the
jungle, are incapable of doing this; and when you see the fractured
large bones, you can always tell that the whiskered monarch has been
on the war-path. George S. writes me:--

'I have known a tiger devour a whole bullock to his own cheek in one
day. Early in the morning a