'As a rule the stripes of a Royal Bengal are single and dark. The
skull is widely different from that of his brother the Hill tiger,
being low in the crown, wider in the jaws, rather flat in comparison,
and the brain-pan longer with a sloping curve at the end, the crest of
the brain-pan being a concave curve.
'The Hill tiger is much more massively built; squat and thick set,
heavier in weight and larger in bulk, with shorter tail, and very
large and powerful neck, head, and shoulders. The stripes generally
are double, and of a more brownish tinge, with fawn colour between the
double stripes. The skull is high in the crown, and not quite so wide.
The brain-pan is shorter, and the crest slightly convex or nearly
straight, and the curve at the end of the skull rather abrupt.
'They never grow so long as the "Bengal," yet look twice as big.
'The crosses are very numerous, and vary according to pedigree, in
stripes, skulls, form, weight, bulk, and tail. This I find most
remarkable when I look at my collection of over 160 skulls.
'The difference is better marked in tigers than in tigresses. The
Bengal variety are not as a rule as ferocious as the Hill tiger. Being
more supple and cunning, they can easier evade their pursuers by
flight and manoeuvre than, their less agile brothers. The former,
owing to deficiency of strength, oftener meet with discomfiture, and
consequently are more wary and cunning; while the latter, prone to
carry everything before them, trust more to their strength and
courage, anticipating victory as certain.
'In some the stripes are doubled throughout, in others only partially
so, while in some they are single throughout, and some have manes to a
slight extent.'
I have no doubt this classification is correct. The tigers I have seen
in Nepaul near the hills, were sometimes almost a dull red, and at a
distance looked like a huge dun cow, while those I have seen in the
plains during our annual hunts, were of a bright tawny yellow, longer,
more lanky, and not shewing half such a bold front as their bulkier
and bolder brethren of the hills.
The length of the tiger has often given rise to fierce discussions
among sportsmen. The fertile imagination of the slayer of a solitary
'stripes,' has frequently invested the brute he has himself shot, or
seen shot, or perchance heard of as having been shot by a friend, or
the friend of a friend, with a, fabulous length, inches swelling to
feet, and dimensions growing at each repetition of the yarn, till, as
in the case of boars, the twenty-eight incher becomes a forty inch
tusker, and the eight foot tiger stretches to twelve or fourteen feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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