We have seen how some animals are, by their cunning and sagacity, able to compete even with man himself. At an earlier period, when wild animals were more numerous than they are now and when man had nowhere risen above the savage state, this must have been still more the case, and, even now, there are parts of the world where the struggle between man and beast can hardly be said to have been decided in favour of the former. Thus in India, in spite of its old and, in many respects, high civilisation, tigers have held their own from time immemorial, and every year numbers of the natives are killed by certain individuals amongst them, that have acquired a taste for human flesh in preference to any other. These man-eaters, as they are called, become wonderfully cunning, and never attack either a European or a _shikaree_, or native hunter, who is always armed with his matchlock. The poor labourers or cattle-herds, on the other hand, who carry nothing, except perhaps a stick, which, of course, is of no use, are totally defenceless against these lurking fiends, which hang about the villages, and sometimes quite depopulate them. A fearful thing it must be, not to be able to stir beyond the little collection of mud and straw-thatched huts which make an Indian village without being liable to a sudden and horrible death. Sometimes, indeed, the tiger will come into the very village street and carry off a man or a woman almost from the door of their hut. Or it will lurk near the well or tank from which the water is drawn, so that to procure the precious fluid, without which the lives of the community could not be supported, individual lives must constantly be risked. The only remedy for a state of things like this is the arrival of a British officer or, at least, of a native shikaree upon the scene, and this in a country so large and densely populated as India, and with such a small scattering of Europeans in it, is not an everyday occurrence. Often, therefore, the people get tired of waiting, and after losing a certain proportion of their number, the remainder abandon the village and migrate to another part of the country altogether.