Wild Animals in India.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXI, Issue 8959, 7 December 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

Wild Animals in India.

Last year 1285 tigers, 4370 panthers! and leopards, 2000 bears, and 2086 wolves were killed ; of snakes—the real scourge of India—no record is possible and, un, fortunately, comparatively few are destroyed. However deplorable and costly is the taking of human and cattle life, the descent upon promising crops by deer and pigs and monkeys would be even more serious to India, and more expensive to tiie natives were it not for the tiger, the panther and the leopard. This formidable trio of the cat family practically police agricultural India where it pushes into the jungle, and makes it possible for the poor native to exist through cultivation of his fields. So, after all, it is a question whether, speaking very broadly, tigers are not more beneficial than harmful. Undoubtedly the depredations of the tiger are over-estimated, because it is so feared that wherever it prowls invariable panic spreads widely to its discredit. On India's last- yeaT's death list 2649 were credited to wild beasts; and while all of these aTe laid up against the tiger, panthers and wolves (especially panthers) should be cliarged with a veTy considerable shaTe. The fact is that the panther and leopard—which except as to size, axe alike in spotted pelt and temper—are as much underestimated as the tiger is overestimated. The smaller leopard devotes itself more to goats and pigs and monkeys, while the panther attacks deer, gaur, cattle, and man, for the panther also on occasions, becomes a man-eater, and when jt does its fury is insatiable. Panthers aTe bolder in attack, more active and more generally vicious than tigers; yet they inspire nothing like such awe among the natives. Indeed, I have seen natives rally to the defence of a dog, of which leopards are particularly fond, when, had the intruder, been a tiger, they would have been paralysed into inaction by very fear.