"There are not as many tigers in India now as there were twenty years ago," said the captain, "thanks to the perseverance of the hunters and the bounties offered by the Government; but we have quite enough of them left, as you will understand when I tell you that in the Madras presidency alone, for the quarter ending September 30th of last year, the destruction by tigers and leopards amounted to 366 bullocks, 413 cows, 151 calves, 87 buffaloes, 112 sheep, 114 goats, 20 horses or ponies, and 15 donkeys. The number of human lives destroyed in the same time is not stated, but it is officially recorded that in six years 13,401 people were killed by wild beasts in the Bengal presidency; 4218 of them by tigers, 4287 by wolves, 1407 by leopards, and 105 by bears; the rest by other wild animals. In the year 1871 the total number of deaths in India by snakes and wild animals was 18,078, and about three-fourths of these were caused by snakes; in 1869, 14,529 persons lost their lives by snake-bites, and you therefore see that serpents are more dangerous than tigers. "A tiger that has once tasted human flesh is ever afterward disinclined to hunt for other game. He has learned how easy it is to kill a man, and how little risk he runs in doing so, and his instinctive dread of the human race seems to disappear altogether. Such a tiger is known as a 'man-eater;' he lies close to the paths where the natives pass and pounces upon them suddenly, and he has the shrewdness to change his locality a little after each slaughter. It is officially reported that in one district a man-eating tiger killed 127 persons in a short time, and caused a complete suspension of business on the road for many weeks. Another tiger killed 150 persons in three years, compelled the abandonment of many villages, and threw 250 square miles of country out of cultivation. The Government offered a thousand dollars for the head of this tiger, and he was finally killed by an officer of the army.