THE MAN-EATING TIGER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 184, 6 October 1876, Page 8

THE MAN-EATING TIGER.

[From 'Chambers's Journal.] Dr. jFayrer caused some sensation by Bhowing that during the one year 1869, 6,219 deaths from snakebite occurred in the Bengal Presidency alone, among a population of something more than 43,000,000 of souls. He now horrifies us with accounts of the devastation caused by man-eating tigers, which occasionally cause villages, and even whole districts, to be deserted. In one instance in the Central Provinces a single tigress caused the desertion of thirteen villages, while 250 square miles of country were thrown out of cultivation before the creature was shot. Another tigress in 1869 killed 127 people, and stopped a public road for many weeks before it, too, succumbed to an English sportsman. In 1868 the magistrate of Godavery reported that part of the country overrun with tigers, no road safe, and that a tiger had recently charged a lxrge body of villagers within a few hundred yards of the civil station It is impossible to give accurate statistics for the whole of so vast a country as Hindustan; but Jerdon corroborates these statements by asserting that in the district east of Jubbulpore, in 1856 and previous years, on an average between 200 and 300 villagers were killed annually. Tigers apparently develope into maneaters when they are old and sluggish, and the teeth are somewhat decayed. Preferring human flesh, they find, when once the awe natural to wild animals at the presence of man is shaken off, that he offers an easy and tempting prey. In some districts they abound ; while in others, as in Oude and Kohilcund, one is only heard of about every six years. The natives are extremely superstitious respecting tigers, and in many parts dread the wrath of the slain tiger's spirit almost more than they feared the creature when alive. The small clavicles or shoulder-bones, which are deeply imbedded in muscle, are esteemed valuable charms ; while every sportsman, or, indeed, every one who is familiar with tiger skins, knows how difficult it is to save the tiger's claws. The whiskers, too, are immediately plucked out by the sportman's servants, on the tiger being shot, before their master can come up, as they are deemed a valuable love philter. Those who are most rigorously honest in all other respects cannot refrain from thus mutilating a skin. On the spot where a tiger has slain a human being, in the district round Mirzapore, the natives erect a curious conical mound of earth, which is ornamented with some colored wash for a coating, a few flowers, and one or more singularly shaped pieces of pottery. It is considered sacrilege to touch these, and once a year the inhabitants of the neighboring village visit the memorials, and worship there.