But worse by far than the cattle-destroying tigers are the man-eaters. These are sometimes said to be the old and almost toothless animals which can no longer kill a buffalo or a bullock, and therefore take to preying upon human beings instead. But very often quite a young animal becomes a man-eater; and it is said that if a tiger should once taste human blood he will always prefer it afterward to any other food. A man-eating tiger will often throw a whole district into a state of terror. Day after day he will conceal himself among the thick bushes which border a native road, and lie in wait for solitary passers-by. One day, perhaps, a man will be carried off; the next day, a woman; the day after, a child. No one knows where the animal is hiding; and sometimes he will succeed in killing fifty or sixty human beings before he is discovered and destroyed. TIGER-HUNTING When the natives kill a tiger, they generally do so by driving him into a small clump of jungle, surrounding it with stout netting, and then spearing him through the meshes. Or perhaps they will climb a tree close to the carcass of a bullock which the animal has killed, and shoot him when he comes at dusk to feast upon its remains. But in Oudh the tiger is said to have been formerly destroyed in a very curious way. A number of leaves of the prauss tree, which are large and broad like those of a sycamore, were smeared with a kind of bird-lime, and laid upon the ground in the animal's path. When he came along one of these leaves would stick to his paws, and he would find that he could not shake it off. So he would try to remove it by rubbing it against his face. The only result, of course, would be that his nose and eyes became covered with bird-lime. Meanwhile he had trodden upon other leaves, which he tried to remove in the same way. Before very long his eyelids were stuck down so that he could not open them. Then he would lie down and rub his face upon the ground, covering it with earth, and so making matters worse. By this time he would be thoroughly frightened and begin to howl pitifully, so that when the hunters came running up they found the poor beast an easy prey. Europeans, however, hunt the tiger by means of elephants, which have to be carefully trained before they can be depended upon to face the furious animal. A number of elephants are generally employed, the hunters riding in howdahs, seats fixed upon their backs, while several hundred natives, perhaps, act as beaters, shouting and yelling, beating drums, firing guns, and making as much din as they possibly can to frighten the animal from its retreat. Sometimes it is so terrified that it slinks out, and falls an easy prey. But now and then it will charge the nearest elephant with the utmost fury, sometimes springing upon it and almost reaching the howdah before it is killed by a well-directed bullet.