In large covers there are often outlets and lines of exit, in addition to those guarded by a party of say four or five sportsmen, who post themselves at the most important points. These all require to be blocked up, so that a tiger, should he attempt to escape by any of them, may be readily turned on to a path which will draw him under fire. One of the covers in which the writer was fortunate enough to bag several tigers in different years, consisted of a river of about a hundred and fifty yards width, with ravines branching out at different points, and low hills bordering the banks. It was impracticable with fewer than a hundred men, and was best driven by elephants, in consequence of the thick and tangled state of the bushes. It was a piece of ground of the kind described above, offering numerous outlets, as the cover extended right under one of the banks, and ran for some distance along the length of the river; while the bank itself was of no great height, and might be ascended in a moment at any point. The method of blocking up the outlets which the sportsmen themselves cannot watch, is to place over them, on trees, the sharpest and most intelligent of the men that can be selected from among the beaters. They should be instructed to strike the tree with a stone taken up in the hand for that purpose, or to employ any other simple process of producing a noise, so that the tiger may be headed back the moment he is seen to be advancing, and his intention is unmistakable. A blank shot will be necessary to turn a _rapidly_ advancing tiger; and a matchlock or spare gun in the hands of a competent person should in such cases be kept in reserve. Many of the rivers in India during the hunting season are perfectly dry beds, except as to a mere rill or narrow stream. The actual water's edge is, however, almost sure to be the tiger's position, if fringed by bushes sufficiently large to afford him shelter; for he delights in lapping the water frequently, and in laving his limbs during the hottest hours of the day. With respect to the height a tiger will clear at a bound or series of bounds, some uncertainty seems to prevail. In Captain Shakspeare's _Wild Sports of India_, the author, when twelve feet up a tree, scarcely thought himself beyond the reach of the man-eater he was expecting, as he believed a tiger capable of springing over that height. In the book of Colonel Gordon Gumming (a brother of the African hunter), a sad case is recorded of his gun-bearer being pulled out of a tree and killed by a wounded tiger through incautiously standing only some eight feet above the ground. But points of this nature are altogether of a secondary character, the slightest vantage-ground being sufficient if the requisites are preserved of a cool head and steady hand to guide the management of an efficient weapon.