tigresses. The
Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
courage, anticipating victory as certain.

'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
slight extent.'

I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
and bolder brethren of the hills.

The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.

Purists again, sticklers for stern truth, haters of bounce or
exaggeration, have perhaps erred as much on the other side; and in
their eagerness to give the exact measurement, and avoid the very
appearance of exaggeration, they actually stretch their tape line and
refuse to measure the curves of the body, taking it in straight lines.
This I think is manifestly unfair.

Our mode of measurement in Purneah was to take the tiger as he lay
before he was put on the elephant, and measure from the tip of the
nose, over the crest of the skull, along the undulations of the body,
to the tip of the tail. That is, we followed the curvature of the
spine along the dividing ridge of the back, and always were careful
and fair in our attempts. I am of opinion that a tiger over ten feet
long is an exceptionally long one, but when I read of sportsmen
denying altogether that even that length can be attained, I can