_Mammals._--First among the wild animals of India must be mentioned the lion (_Felis leo_), which is known to have been not uncommon within historical times in Hindustan proper and the Punjab. At present the lion is confined to the Gir, or rocky hill-desert and forest of Kathiawar. A peculiar variety is there found, marked by the absence of a mane; but whether this variety deserves to be classed as a distinct species, naturalists have not yet determined. These lions at one time were almost extinct, but after being preserved since about 1890 by the Nawab of Junagarh, they have once more become comparatively plentiful. A good lion, measures from 9 to 9½ ft. in length.
The characteristic beast of prey in India is the tiger (_F. tigris_), which is found in every part of the country, from the slopes of the Himalayas to the Sundarbans swamps. The average length of a tiger from nose to tip of tail is 9 ft. to 10 ft. for tigers, and 8 ft. to 9 ft. for tigresses, but a tiger of 12 ft. 4 in. has been shot. The advance of cultivation, even more than the incessant attacks of sportsmen, has gradually caused the tiger to become a rare animal in large tracts of country; but it is scarcely probable that he will ever be exterminated from India. The malarious _tarái_ fringing the Himalayas, the uninhabitable swamps of the Gangetic delta, and the wide jungles of the central plateau are at present the chief home of the tiger. His favourite food appears to be deer, antelope and wild hog. When these abound he will disregard domestic cattle. Indeed, the natives are disposed to consider him as in some sort their protector, as he saves their crops from destruction by the wild animals on which he feeds. But when once he develops a taste for human blood, then the slaughter he works becomes truly formidable. The confirmed man-eater, which is generally an old beast, disabled from overtaking his usual prey, seems to accumulate his tale of victims in sheer cruelty rather than for food. A single tiger is known to have killed 108 people in the course of three years. Another killed an average of about 80 persons per annum. A third caused thirteen villages to be abandoned, and 250 sq. m. of land to be thrown out of cultivation. A fourth, in 1869, killed 127 people, and stopped a public road for many weeks, until the opportune arrival of an English sportsman, who at last killed him. Such cases are, of course, exceptional, and generally refer to a period long past, but they explain and justify the superstitious awe with which the tiger is regarded by the natives. The favourite mode of shooting the tiger is from the back of elephants, or from elevated platforms (_macháns_) of boughs in the jungle. In Central India they are shot on foot. In Assam they are sometimes speared from boats, and in the Himalayas they are said to be ensnared by bird-lime. Rewards are given by government to native _shikáris_ for the heads of tigers, varying in time and place according to the need. In 1903 the number of persons killed by tigers in the whole of India was 866, while forty years previously 700 people were said to be killed annually in Bengal alone.
