fraction of what he kills, as the moment that news of a bullock being
killed reaches the village, the low class natives at once proceed to the
spot, drive away the tiger, and carry off the beef. And this is only
prevented when an English sportsman is within reach, in which case the
cattle owners prevent the people from touching the carcase. It is often
very annoying when tying out baits for tigers, to find them destroyed by
panthers, as the panther, of course, from his habit of climbing trees, and
concealing himself in the foliage, and from a kind of general facility
that he seems to have for getting out of the way, is a difficult animal to
find, in fact so much so, that I latterly would never go out after one,
unless it had killed quite close at hand. In 1891 I was once much annoyed
to find that a new kind of bait with an additional attraction had been
quite ruined by a panther. This attraction consisted of a goat picketed in
an open-topped (that was the mistake, it ought to have been closed) wooden
cage which was placed in the branches of a tree, on the edge of the
jungle, and about fifteen feet from the ground, while a bullock was
picketed on the ground in the open land, about twenty yards away. The
theory was that the, to a tiger, attractive aroma of the goat would be
widely diffused, and that he might, too, further attract the tiger by his
cries. News (false as it afterwards turned out to be) was brought in that
a tiger had killed the bullock, and I toiled up on to the mountain some
seven miles away from my bungalow, merely to find that a panther had
killed the bullock and that my goat was hanging dead by the neck outside
the cage just like a carcase in a butcher's shop. The panther had seized
the goat, killed it, and jumped out of the cage with it, and had either
not sense enough to cut the rope with his teeth, or had his suspicions
aroused from finding the animal tied. To show that the suspicions of an
animal can thus be aroused, I may mention the following incident, which is
also especially interesting as showing the great skill of the tiger as a
stalker and the singular power he has of stepping noiselessly on dry
leaves, and his power to do mischief after being apparently shot dead. But
before doing so I may mention rather an interesting circumstance. Besides
the bait killed by the panther, I had two bullocks tied out in the
neighbourhood, and as I did not care much for that part of the country,
ordered them to b