Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Mammalia).djvu/96

60 of a male tiger 9 feet 7 inches long measured 13 inches in extreme length, 12 in basal length, and 9 in breadth across the zygomatic arches; that of a large Nepal tigress 10 inches in extreme length by 7·8 in zygomatic breadth. But an enormous skull from Purneah measures according to Sterndale 15·25 by 10·5. Sanderson found a bulky, well-fed male tiger to weigh 25 stone (350 lbs.), and Elliot gives the weight of two large male tigers as 360 and 380 lbs., aud of a large tigress 240 lbs. Forsyth gives much higher weights, but it is not clear whether he actually weighed tlie animals.

Distribution. Throughout India, Burma, and other parts of South-eastern Asia, Java, and Sumatra, but not Ceylon, nor, it is said, Borneo. The tiger occurs in suitable localities throughout a great part of Central Asia, and is found in the Valley of the Amur, the Altai Mouurains, around Lob Nor in Eastern Turkestan, about the Sea of Aral, on the Murgháb near Herat, on the southern coast of the Caspian (Hyrcania), and in the Caucasus, but not in Tibet, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, or Persia south of the Elburz Mountains on the Caspian.

In India tigers still occur wherever large tracts of forest or grass-jungle exist; but within the last 20 or 30 years the number of these destructive animals has been greatly reduced, and they have now become scarce, or have even in some cases disappeared entirely in parts of the country where they formerly were common. This has been the case especially throughout a large area of the Central Provinces, in many parts of Bengal, and several districts of the Bombay Presidency. In the forests at the base of the Himalayas tigers are common, and they ascend the hills occasionally to an elevation of 6000 or 7000 feet, but none are found in the interior of the mountains. The species is entirely wanting throughout Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and the other countries due west of India, and is only found in a few places in Upper Sind aud the western Punjab. It is wanting in Lower Sind and Cutch. To the eastward, in Assam and Burma, tigers are generally distributed.

The absence of tigers in Ceylon would seem to indicate that this animal has only recently migrated into Southern India, more recently than most of the other mammals, the majority of which are found on both sides of Palk Straits.

Habits. Eor a full account of the habits of tigers, on which more has been written than probably on any other wild animal, reference may be made to numerous works by Indian sportsmen. Foremost amongst these are Sir J. Fayrer's 'The Royal Tiger of Bengal,' Sterndale's 'Seonee' and 'Natural History of Indian Mammalia,' Forsyth's admirable 'Highlands of Central India,' Sanderson's equally accurate 'Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India,' and McMaster's 'Notes on Jerdon's Mammals of India.' The first gives an account of the tiger in the grass-jungles and swamps of the Ganges valley, the second and third describe the animal haunting the forests of the Central Provinces, the fourth writer's experience was mainly gained in Mysore, and that of the fifth in the hills of Southern India.