Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait561880roya).pdf/172

 Mr. has commented, somewhere in his works, on this puzzling fact in animal distribution, and he has suggested that the tiger may have been a denizen of the jungles of Borneo in former days, and that it has subsequently become extinct from causes at present unexplainable. This is, of course, a purely hypothetical solution of the problem. Another one occurs to me—also hypothetical, but also possible—viz., that the tiger may he a comparatively recent immigrant southwards on this side of Asia; and that, by the time it had extended its range to the latitude of the extremity of the Peninsula, the insulation of Borneo from the mainland by submergence of the intervening area may have already roached to such an extent, as to render it no longer possible for the animal to effect a lodgment on the island, even by dint of its well-known power of swimming across wide straits of water.

Whatever the true explanation of its absence, it is worth while recording the fact that there is a widespread tradition of a large carnivorous animal among the tribes that people the North-West Coast of Borneo. Without paying any special attention to these stories, I have yet come across them several times. When visiting the Serimbo mountain in Sarawak in 1870 some Land Dyaks voluntarily retailed to me an account of large tigers (harimau) which they had heard described by the old men of their tribe, and in whose existence they themselves firmly believed. The animals, they said, were of great size, having hair a foot in length of a reddish colour striped with black, and they had their lairs in the great caves of the district. This account agreed exactly with another which I had heard from the Balan Dyaks (Sea Dyaks) of the Semunjan river, who declared that a pair of these animals haunted a cave in the Pupok hill. Subsequently I again heard these Pupok tigers spoken of by another party of the same Dyaks, who lived close to the hill. (vol. ii., p. 107), when travelling among the Muruts of the Linbang river, met with a similar story of large tigers inhabiting caves, which he gives at length, and adds the remark, "it is worth noticing that the Muruts of Padas have a great dread of ascending