The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-02-18
.BIG CATS PROVE MOST DANGEROUS Are Most Difficult for Tanners
 to Handle TRAITS OF THE TIGER Is Easiest of the Cat Family to Handle Because He Likes to Be Rubbed.
 Some Marvellous
 Claws.
TRAITS OF THE TIGER

"Of all wild animals" writes A. w. Roll1er in the February Appleton's Maga- zine, including the rhinnoceros with his frightful charge and his dreadful horn including the rogue elephant with his unbounded strength, his marvellous cun- ming, and his villainous trunk, and in- cluding that gray shaggy rogue the American grizzly with his rib-crushing hug his ponderous paw, and his hot, reeking nav, no beast is as dangerous to man as any one of the big cats. For besides the mouth provided with teeth that can crunch through the leg bone of man as if 1t were a pipestem, each foot is provided with five poniard-lilxe claws, pointed like needles and from three to four and a half inches long. As the beast strikes with these he draws the claws in, keeping hold of muscles and tendons and ligaments and tearing them out of the flesh until they snap like rub Der bands, so that unless the victim sue cumbs it will be months and months and sometimes years and years before he can regain use of an injured member.
 Has Curious Claws.
 But not only do these talons tear. Curious to say, considering that all though the claws are needle-pointed the edges are dull as the tip of a little fin- ger a cut with one of these hooks Is like the cut of a dagger. Last year, in
 
 Bengal tigress made a sweep at 8 Euro pean black bear, cut through the six ineh-thick fur of the bear, and cut three parallel strips two feet long and six inches deep and clean as razor slashes to the very backbone of the beast. As a matter of fact, the deXterity of one of these big cats claws is astounding. Here is a curious accident which happened to Bostock himself when he undertook per sonally to break in a rogue tiger that had gone bad Provided with sole leather guards worn next the skin and covering the feshy part of the leg from the groin to the knee, he entered tho arena with the bad one and was attacked and wounded. His trousers were slashed in one spot just big enough to admit single slaw an undergarment showed two similar and the soe-leather guard three similar cuts, while the flesh was torn an inch deep in Tour places three inches long. Still another instace show ing the marvellous quicl1ness of claw, happened in the same show when the trainer in charge of a leopard group was saved in the nick of time from a rogue which had tried to pull him down by climbing up on him. The arm of this man showed, between wrist and elbow alone, twenty-six wounds varying from a quarter of an inch deep and an inch long to one inch deep and four inches long.
 Trainers Prefer the Tiger.
 "Of all the big cats including that magnificent jungle-maned monarch of might, the lion, and including those beau tifuly spotted orange-and-black villains, the taguar and the leopard, and their cousin, that noiseless, 1ightning-swift traitor, the panther. trainers prefer to handle the tiger. This Is contrary to the popular belief which credits the tiger as the most bloodthirsty of all wild beasts. The tiger is, however, the quickest to learn and the easiest to handle. Whereas the tiger always remains a nervous, high strung brute, after time a lion becomes phlegmatic and lazy and requires urging, which is apt to cause trouble. Whereas the tiger is demon incarnate and merciless once aroused, he is at least an honest fighter who gives ample wfrning when about to attack and only as a rare execution attacks a man from behind, unlike the 1aguar the leopard and the panther, which are treacherous and al most invariably attack when back IS turned. Again. of all this dangerous family the nature of the tiger comes nearest that of an ordinary house cat and. always comparatively. the tiger 1t is that is most appreciative once the master has succeeded in establishing his truce Then like the domestic cat, he likes to brush up against the person Of his trainer, loves to have his back rubbed and eroomed and the top of his head scratched to soothe the everlasting itch between the ears, while he emits purrs of satisfaction, forgetting that the least unforeseen accident may arouse mur- derous instincts that would in twin kling convert the friendly meeting into a shambles."