the natives in the matter, and they
said that they could not say whether the tiger had died from wounds or
whether he had been killed by the tiger that had carried off and eaten the
body, but they were positive that it was a tiger that had eaten the body,
from the tracks, for the body had been taken down to water, on the margin
of which no other tracks but those of a tiger were visible, and these were
clearly defined. They could also be distinctly traced from the place in
the open grassland whence the body was carried. Taking all the
circumstances into consideration--the distance travelled, the steepness of
the ground, and the fact that the tiger passed a favourable jungle for
lying in, I am strongly of opinion, in fact, I consider it almost certain,
that the wounded tiger must have been dispatched by the other tiger, which
was hungry and could not resist the smell of the blood. There is nothing
remarkable in a tiger eating a tiger found dead, and I have read and heard
of instances of this, and also of tigers fighting, and the vanquished
tiger being eaten.

It is a common idea that tigers cannot climb trees, but this has arisen
from the fact that they have seldom occasion to do so. Mr. Sanderson
mentions the case of a tigress having been seen to climb a tree in a wood
on the Nilgiri Hills, and though he has never seen a tiger in a tree
himself, deprecates the idea of there being anything impossible in the
matter, and if we come to consider that the large forest panther, which
commonly ascends trees, is really often nearly as heavy as a small-sized
tigress, there is nothing at all improbable in the tiger doing so. I
myself have never seen a tiger in a tree, but one of my managers did, who
once went out after a tiger which he had wounded. He then ran on to cut
him off, and tried to get up into a tree, but not succeeding in the
attempt, went and took a seat some way off on the hillside. The tiger
presently emerged from the jungle, went to the tree and began roaring and
scraping at the ground, and he must have either smelt traces of the
manager or seen him trying to get up into it, and concluded he was there.
However, he deliberately went up the tree paw over paw, and got into a
cleft of it and looked about in the tree, and then came down backwards,
and was shot in the act of descending. I sent and obtained measurements of
this tree, the stem of which was 16-1/2 feet up to the first branch. The
tiger climbed up so far, and l