IN the class of carnivorous animals, the lion stands foremost, and he is immediately followed by the tiger, who, possessing all the bad qualities of the former, is a stranger to his good ones. To pride, courage, and strength, the lion adds dignity, clemency, and generosity, while the tiger is ferocious without provocation and cruel without necessity. Thus it is throughout all nature where rank proceeds from the superiority of strength. The first class, sole master of all, are less tyrannical than their immediate inferiors, who, denied unlimited authority, abuse those powers which they possess; thus the tiger is more to be dreaded than the lion. The latter often forgets that he is the sovereign, or strongest of animals; with an even pace he traverses the plains and forests; man he attacks not unless provoked, nor animals but when goaded by hunger. The tiger, on the contrary, though glutted with carnage, has still an insatiate thirst for blood; his rancour has no intervals. With indiscriminate fury he tears in pieces every animal he comes near, and destroys with the same ferocity a fresh animal as he had done the first. Thus he is the scourge of every country he inhabits; and of the appearance of man or his weapons, he is fearless. He will destroy whole flocks of domestic animals if he meets with them, and all the wild animals that come in his way. He attacks the young elephant and rhinoceros, and will sometimes brave the lion himself.
The form of the body usually corresponds with the nature and disposition. The noble air of the lion, the height of his limbs in exact proportion to the length of his body, his large thick mane, which covers his shoulders and shades his face, his determined aspect, and solemn pace, seem to announce the dignity and majestic intrepidity of his nature. The tiger has a body too long, limbs disproportionally short, naked head, and haggard eyes; strong characteristics of desperate malice and insatiable cruelty. He has no instinct but an uniform rage, a blind fury, so undistinguishing that he not unoften devours his own progeny, and even tears the dam in pieces if she offers to defend them. Would he were to gratify his thirst for blood to its utmost, and by destroying them at their birth extinguish the whole race of monsters which he produces!
Happy is it for other animals that the species of tiger is not numerous, and that it is chiefly confined to the warmest provinces of the East. They are found in Malabar, Siam, Bengal, and in all the countries inhabited by the elephant and rhinoceros. It is, indeed, said, that they accompany the latter for the purpose of eating their dung, which serves to purge them. Be this as it may, they are often seen together at the sides of lakes and rivers, where they are probably compelled to go by thirst, having often occasion for water to cool that fervor they so constantly endure. It is also a convenient situation to surprise his victims, since the heat of the climate compels all animals to seek for water several times a day; here he chooses his prey, or rather multiplies his massacres, for having killed one animal, he often proceeds to the destruction of others, tearing open their bodies, and swallowing their blood by long draughts; for which their thirst seems never to be appeased.
When, however, he has killed a large animal, as a horse, or buffalo, he does not devour it on the spot, for fear of being disturbed, but drags it off to the forest, which he does with such ease, that the swiftness of his course seems scarcely retarded by the enormous load which he trails after him. From this circumstance we might judge of his strength, but we shall have a more just idea of it by considering his bodily dimensions. Some travellers have compared him for size to the horse, others to the buffalo, and others merely say he is larger than the lion; but we have accounts more recent, which deserve the utmost confidence. I have been assured by M. de la Lande-Magon that he saw a tiger in the East-Indies fifteen feet long; allowing that he includes the tail, and granting four feet for that, the body would still be more than ten. It is true that the skin preserved in the Royal Cabinet of France is not more than seven feet from the tip of the nose to the insertion of the tail; but this tiger had been taken very young, and was afterwards always confined in a very narrow apartment, where the want of exercise, and space to range in, restraint and, perhaps, not having proper nourishment, not only its life might have been shortened, but the growth of its body prevented. From the dissection of animals of every species that have been reared in houses or court-yards, we find that their bodies and members for want of exercise, never attain their natural dimensions, and that the organs which are not used as those of generation, are so little expanded as to be scarcely perceivable.
The difference of climate alone is capable of producing the same effects as confinement and want of exercise. None of the animals of hot countries produce in cold ones, even though well fed, and at full liberty; and as reproduction is a natural consequence of full nutrition, it is evident that when the former does not operate the latter must be incomplete; and that, in such animals, cold of itself is sufficient to restrain the powers of the internal mould, and to diminish the growth, since it destroys the active faculties of reproduction. It is not, therefore, surprising that the tiger above alluded to should not have acquired its natural growth; yet from a bare view of its stuffed skin, and an examination of its skeleton, we may form an idea of its formidable strength as an animal. Upon the bones of the legs there are inequalities which denote muscular ligatures stronger than those of the lion. These bones are also to the full as strong, though shorter; and, as already intimated, the height of the tiger’s legs bear no proportion to the length of his body. Thus that velocity which Pliny ascribes to him and which the word tiger seems to imply, ought not to be understood of his ordinary movements, or the celerity of his continued course; for it is evident, that as his legs are short and he can neither walk nor run so fast as those animals which have them proportionally longer; but this prodigious swiftness, may with great propriety, be applied to the extraordinary bounds he is capable of making without any particular effort, for if we suppose him to have the same strength and agility in proportion with the cat, which he greatly resembles in conformation, and which in an instant will leap several feet, we must allow that the bounds of a tiger, whose body is ten times as large, must be immense. It is not, therefore, the quickness of his running, but of his leaping that Pliny meant to denote, and which from the impossibility of evading, when he has made a spring, still renders him more formidable.
The tiger is, perhaps, the only animal whose spirit cannot be subdued. Neither force nor restraint, violence nor flattery, can prevail, in the least, on his stubborn Nature. He is equally indignant at the gentle and harsh usage of his keeper; and time instead of mollifying his disposition, only serves to increase his fierceness and malignity. With equal wrath he snaps at the hand that feeds as that which chastises him. He roars at the sight of every object which lives, and seems to consider all as his proper prey; he seems to devour beforehand with a look, menacing it with the grinding of his teeth, and, regardless of his chains, makes efforts to dart upon it, as if to shew his malignity when incapable of exerting his force.