but
pity the dogmatic scepticism that refuses credence to well ascertained
and authenticated facts. I believe also that tigers are not got nearly
so large as in former days. I believe that much longer and heavier
tigers--animals larger in every way--were shot some twenty years ago
than those we can get now, but I account for this by the fact that
there is less land left waste and uncultivated. There are more roads,
ferries, and bridges, more improved communications, and in consequence
more travelling. Population and cultivation have increased; firearms
are more numerous; sport is more generally followed; shooting is much
more frequent and deadly; and, in a word, tigers have not the same
chances as they had some twenty years ago of attaining a ripe old age,
and reaching the extremest limit of their growth. The largest tigers
being also the most suspicious and wary, are only found in the
remotest recesses of the impenetrable jungles of Nepaul and the Terai,
or in those parts of the Indian wilds where the crack of the European
rifle is seldom or never heard.

It has been so loudly asserted, and so boldly maintained that no tiger
was ever shot reaching, when fairly measured (that is, measured with
the skin on, as he lay), ten feet, that I will let Mr. George again
speak for himself. Referring to the royal Bengal, he says:--

'These grow to great lengths. They have been shot as long as twelve
feet seven inches (my father shot one that length) or longer; twelve
feet seven inches, twelve feet six inches, twelve feet three inches,
twelve feet one inch, and twelve feet, have been shot and recorded in
the old sporting magazines by gentlemen of undoubted veracity in
Purneah.

'I have seen the skin of one twelve feet one inch, compared with which
the skin of one I have by me _that measured as he lay_ (the italics
are mine) eleven feet one inch, looks like the skin of a cub. The old
skin looks more like that of a huge antediluvian species in comparison
with the other.

'The twelve footer was so heavy that my uncle (C.A.S.) tells me no
number of mahouts could lift it. Several men, if they could have
approached at one and the same time, might have been able to do so,
but a sufficient number of men could not lay hold simultaneously to
move the body from the ground.

'Eventually a number of bamboos had to be cut, and placed in an
incline from the ground to the elephant's saddle while the elephant
knelt down, and up this incline