"

The cubs are interesting pets if taken from the mother very young.
I have reared several, but only kept one for any length of time. I
have given a full description of Zalim and his ways in 'Seonee.' He
was found by my camp followers with another in a nullah, and brought
to me. The other cub died, but Zalim lived to grow up into a very
fine tiger, and was sent to England. I never allowed him to taste
raw flesh. He had a little cooked meat every day, and as much milk
as he liked to drink, and he throve well on this diet. When he was
too large to be allowed to roam about unconfined I had a stout
buffalo-leather collar made for his neck, and he was chained to a
stump near the cook-room door. With grown-up people he was perfectly
tame, but I noticed he got restless when children approached him,
and so made up my mind to part with him before he did any mischief.

I know nothing of the habits of the tiger of the grass plains, but
those of the hill tiger are very interesting, the cattle lifter
especially, as he is better known to men. Each individual has his
special idiosyncrasy. I wrote of this once before as follows:
"Strange though it may seem to the English reader that a tiger should
have any special character beyond the general one for cruelty and
cunning, it is nevertheless a fact that each animal has certain
peculiarities of temperament which are well known to the villagers
in the neighbourhood. They will tell you that such a one is daring
and rash; another is cunning and not to be taken by any artifice;
that one is savage and morose; another is mild and harmless. There
are few villages in the wilder parts of the Seonee and Mandla
districts without an attendant tiger, which undoubtedly does great
damage in the way of destroying cattle, but which avoids the human
inhabitants of the place. So accustomed do the people get to their
unwelcome visitor that we have known the boys of a village turn a
tiger out of quarters which were reckoned too close, and pelt him
with stones. On one occasion two of the juvenile assailants were
killed by the animal they had approached too near. Herdsmen in the
same way get callous to the danger of meddling with so dreadful a
creature, and frequently rush to the rescue of their cattle when
seized. On a certain occasion one out of a herd of cattle was attacked
close to our camp, and rescued single-handed by it's owner, who laid
his heavy iron-bound staff across the tiger's back; and, on our