t to determine, but I may say generally it is such that while
bachelors, or married men of independent means whose families are well
provided for, in short, people whose lives are of no cash value, may
freely go into the jungle on foot after wounded tigers, and generally
throw themselves in the way of the animals, I do not consider it right for
a married man, whose family is dependent wholly or partially on his
exertions, to go after tigers on foot, or without the aid of elephants,
for though a man may resolve to stick to safe positions, they are often
difficult and sometimes impossible to find, and the excitement soon does
away with all feelings for one's personal safety.

Though I have no doubt that it is, generally speaking, true that a tiger
will not attack a group of four or five people, I am not at all sure that
this is correct as regards a wounded tiger, and a tiger I had wounded once
sprang into a party of I should say at least twenty people, and killed
one of them--at least the poor man died in the course of a few hours. I
always regretted that I did not obtain and preserve his belt. At the back
of it was the iron catch with which to hitch his wood-knife, and the
tiger's tooth had grazed one side of the iron, and cut it as if one had
worked at the iron with a steel file. Another instance too occurred of a
tiger attacking a party, or at least one of a party which was approaching
a tiger. Several tigers, it appeared, had been marked down, and the jungle
in which they were was surrounded by nets. This was done in Mysore on the
arrival of the Russian princes some years ago, but one of the tigers had
managed to elude the shooters, and, as the native magistrate of the
district was anxious to have it killed, a sporting photographer who was
there undertook to look it up. As they approached the thicket in which the
tiger was concealed the tiger rushed out with a sudden bound, aimed a blow
with its paw at the leading native, tore his scalp right off and flung it
on to a bush, bit the man in the arm, and retreated into the thicket with
such suddenness that no one had time to fire. The poor man afterwards
died.

The great danger from following up wounded tigers on foot in the jungle
arises from the extraordinary difficulty of seeing the animal when it is
lying amongst dry fallen leaves, into which the body partially sinks, and
this is more particularly the case if there is a flickering sunlight
coming though the branches o