all probability continue killing and
eating people till some one plucked up the courage--for wer-tigers were
not only dreaded, but held in the greatest awe--to shoot him.

There are certain tribes in India known to be adepts in Occultism, and
therefore one is not surprised to find lycanthropy linked with the
mysterious jugglery, etherical projection, and other psychic feats
accomplished by these tribesmen. The wer-tiger is not confined to the
Kandhs: it is met with in Malaysia, in the gorgeous tropical forests of
Java and Sumatra, where it is feared more than anything on earth by the
gentle and intelligent natives; and, if rumour be true, in the great,
lone mountains and dense jungles, and along the hot, unhealthy
river-banks of New Guinea.

In Arawak, it gives place to the wer-jaguar; in Ashangoland, and many
parts of West Africa, to the wer-leopard. Of course, there are cases of
charlatanism in lycanthropy as in medicine, politics, palmistry, and in
every other science. But most, if not all, of these cases of sham
lycanthropy seem to come from West Africa, where leopard societies are
from time to time formed by young savages unable to restrain their
craving for cannibalism. These human vampires dress up in leopard-skins,
and stealing stealthily through the woods at night, attack stray
pedestrians or isolated households. After killing their victims, they
cut off any portions of the body--usually the breasts and thighs--they
fancy most for eating, and then mutilate the rest with the signia of
their society, _i.e._, long and deep scratchings, which are made either
with the claws of a leopard or some other beast, or with sharp iron
nails. Whole districts are often put in a state of panic by these
marauders, who, retiring to their retreat in the heart of some little
known, vast, and almost impenetrable forest, successfully defy capture.
But the fact of there being pseudo-wer-leopards by no means disposes of
the fact that there are genuine ones, any more than the fact that there
are charlatan palmists precludes the possibility of there being _bona
fide_ palmists; and I am inclined to believe lycanthropy exists in
certain parts of West Africa (_i.e._, where primitive conditions are
most in evidence), although not, perhaps, to the same extent as it does
in Asia and Europe. I do not think the negro's relationship to the
Occult Forces is quite the same as that of other races. He is often
clairvoyant and clairaudiant, and alwa