TIGER-SLAYING IN INDIA.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 185, 12 January 1875, Page 3

TIGER-SLAYING IN INDIA.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette.')

The crusade against man-eating tigers is being actively carried on in South India. The tiger-slayer appointed by the Madras Government is poisoning, trapping, and shooting right and left. Now and then sensational reports of the number of tigers exterminated ” proceed from his pen; but unfortunately, a good many of these animals, half-killed or half-poisoned, “ have probably retired to their inaccessible lairs in the pathless iungles.” However, Captain Caulfield, the tiger-slayer to the Madras Government, and his shikarries and staff, must be credited with a good deal of genu.ne zeal, pluck, and success. The interest exhibited in India in their proceedings is not confined merely to sportsmen. Staid officials, experimental chemists, and pious missionaries have alike turned their attention eagerly to the allengrossing subject. The sportsman, of course, regards the raid against man-eaters as rare fun, and with unfeigned avidity reads, marks, and inwardly digests the accounts of each tiger chase. If the pursuer himself should be eaten up, it is a frightful pity, of course; but even then how very interesting is the account of the disaster! The official looks upon the whole affair from an entirely different standpoint. He desires statistics, and these are given him, to some extent at least, in the numbers recorded of tigers killed and “missing.” The man of medicine has a nearer interest still in the matter. He looks at it in a scientific light. What is the exact amout of strychnine which will cause a full-grown tiger to fall dead by the side of the bait? what will form an overdose, merely causing the a’nimal to eject what it has taken and run off scot free? and what will so affect it in a tardy manner that the brute will dash off to its den, and there end its days in the bosom of its family ? The interest displayed by the missionary is easily explained. He has a care for the bodies as well as souls of his flock; and is constantly on the qui vive to ascertain if any one of his recent converts in the tiger-infested districts has avoided inhumation as well as cremation by becoming assimilated with the organic structure of a beast of prey. Finding that the extermination of tigers was attracting so much attention in South India, a Mr Groom, an East Indian of Madras, invented a short time ago an “ armour ” for the tiger-slayer. This invention has not yet been patented. It consists of a dress of canvas, to which bands of leather are attached. These bands are studded with nails, keenly sharpened, with their points

projecting outwards. Mr Groom was satisfied, when inventing his armour, that any tiger, teeing a man clad in it, would at once have the sagacity to imagine him to be an enormous “ fretful porcupine,” and decline attack. But, although he has been frequently requested to do so, Mr Groom declines to test his armour on his own person in the presence of a live tiger in its wild state, and therefore we must hold our opinion of the utility of his invention in abeyance, Anotherslory may be regarded asmore serious. Immediately beforehisappointmentas official tiger-slayer to the Madras Government, Gaptain Caulfield happened to beinGoimbatore,in South India, near the foot of the Neilgherry Hills ; he was staying with a Rev Mr Jackson, a missionary. They heard that a maneating tiger was ravaging the neighborhood. With rifles, and a large body of hunters, they at once set out in pursuit of the cannibal. As they came near to a village they heard a great clamour and the noise of women wailing. It was sunset, and under the shadow of some trees skirting an adjacent jungle they dimly saw a huge old tigress devouring a poor herdsman, whom the had just pounced upon and killed. At sight of Captain Caulfield and party the brute ran into the jungle. It was too dark to follow her, so the Captain and his friend the missionary put some poison into the body of the herdsman, and left it there as a bait for the maneater. The tigress returned, and the next morning was found dead beside her victim. When this story became known the question arose, Were the officer and clergyman justified in using the body of a human being as bait 1 If so. then if a man fell overboard and a shark took off one of his legs, so that he died from loss of blood—in such a case would it be justifiable, in order to capture and kill that shark so as-to prevent it causing the death of any more men, to bait a hook with the limb of a dead man ? It is a curious question, and we leave it to be solved by the infallible reader.