Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait561880roya).pdf/174

 but they begged that he would demand anything rather than this skull, and he therefore did not push the request.

Thus we have in North-West Borneo a tradition of the existence of the tiger common to several widely-separated and very distinct tribes, and we have this skull preserved with so much vencration at Siñgghi. Now, if this skull were proved to be in a fossil condition, there would be little difficulty in accepting Mr. suggestion that the animal in question once had its place in the Bornean fauna and has recently become extinct. But until such proof is obtained, it is equally possible that the skull was brought from Java and made an heirloom of (as is the Dyak custom), at the time when western Borneo was subject to Majapait, when the intercourse of the Dyaks with Java seems to have been both frequent and considerable. And in this case, the traditions above noted might be explained as having been derived either from the report of tigers seen in Java and the Peninsula by natives of Borneo casually visiting those districts in comparatively recent times; or as handed down from the original colonists of Malayan stock who peopled the North-West Coast and to whom the animal would have been familiar.

Since writing the above, I find that, in his account of the Kayans of the Rejang river ( Journal, 1849), states that these people have a proper name for the tiger, which animal they describe as being of large size, and which they persist in saying does exist in several districts of the interior.