Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/45

Rh to the requirements of the animal's predatory life. A curious arrangement of elastic ligaments and muscles provides for the withdrawal of the claws during ordinary progression, so that they are not worn or blunted by contact with the ground. The tiger takes particular care of these terrible weapons. Trees are frequently seen in the jungles scored with long vertical fissures to the height of eight or ten feet from the ground, where tigers have cleansed and sharpened their claws. Some trees are greater favourites than others, and the peepul, or Indian fig, is often disfigured in this manner. All sportsmen know how difficult it is to preserve either claws or whiskers on a tiger's skin. The natives deem them powerful love-charms, and cut them out the instant they dare to approach the prostrate tiger. It requires peculiar watchfulness to prevent this; and Dr. Fayrer tells us that natives who are perfectly honest in all other respects are utterly unable to resist these tempting treasures.

The exact period of the tiger's gestation is unknown, but is put down at fourteen or fifteen weeks. There is no particular season for breeding. Captain Forsyth believed that owing to her cubs remaining with her till nearly full-grown, a tigress has but one litter of cubs in three years, A preponderance of female over male cubs is usually observed, owing, the natives say, to the old male tiger killing all the young males he can find when they are young. The cubs are frequently deposited in long grass, especially the nul. They are generally from two to five in number, and follow their mother, who takes the most anxious care of them, until nearly full-grown; say, to about their second year. At this time the tigress is particularly savage; defends them with the greatest courage, and when robbed of them is terrible in her fury. Pliny tells us that, when wanted, they are stolen by a man on a very swift horse; he sets spurs to his steed, and makes good his escape, till he descries the tigress behind, when he drops one; she halts to fondle and to carry it to her den, during which time he makes renewed exertions to escape, dropping a second on her reappearance, which is also carried to its home. The process is repeated, until either he has no more cubs or gains his ship with what he has managed to secure, when (adds the naturalist) the tiger spends her wrath on the shore. But tigers, he did not know, are very fond of water, and are frequently found in swamps and by the edge of streams. They swim to and from one island to another in the Sunderbunds; and ere now the captain of a trader on coming up from his cabin has found a tiger in possession of the deck and his men in the rigging. The best way now to procure cubs is to shoot the mother. As soon as they can digest flesh the mother tigress kills for them, teaching them to do so for themselves by practising on deer or pigs; then she is wanton and bloodthirsty, killing often for the pleasure of knocking down and destroying life. With all her affection for them, however, she has been known to desert and even to devour them when hard pressed with hunger. When the young ones have left their parent, they are far more destructive than grown-up tigers, often killing three or four cows at a time, while the adult rarely kills more than one, and that, for the most part, only once every three or four days. It has often been doubted whether tigers will feed on carrion, but Col. Wilkinson wrote to the Field paper to say that on a mule falling lately down a steep bank on the new road which was being constructed for the Prince of Wales to go up to the Annamullee Hills, in search of game, the body was poisoned with strychnine, and a tiger was very soon found dead, after feeding on it, some half-mile from the mule. This animal decided another controversy. Endless have been the wranglings over the length of tigers when measured after being slain. Dr. Fayrer points out that errors are apt to arise from the measurement being taken when the skin is removed, in which case, owing to its stretching, it may be ten or twelve inches longer than before it was stripped off. The tiger above-mentioned measured, it was found, nine feet six inches, before being skinned, from nose to tip of tail, and, after being stretched out, the skin was eleven feet five inches. Measuring in every case from the nose to the tip of the tail before the skin is taken off, a tiger of ten feet is large; this may be taken as the extreme size of the full-grown male, though many Indian sportsmen have asserted that they have seen and killed tigers of twelve feet in length, and perhaps, in some special cases, the report may be correct. The tigress runs from eight to ten or, in very rare instances, eleven feet in length, the height being from three to three and one-half feet at