page_title: Black tiger
section_title: Sightings of black tigers (1772–1895)
hierarchical_section_title: Black tiger / Sightings of black tigers (1772–1895)
caption_attribution_description: Image of title page of volume 1, number 1, Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 1886. Scanned and reduced by me (Fowler&amp;fowler«Talk» 18:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)).
context_page_description: A Black tiger is a rare colour variant of the tiger and is not a distinct species or geographic subspecies.
context_section_description: In 1773, while in the service of British East India Company in Kerala, southwest India, artist James Forbes painted a watercolor of a black tiger shot a few months earlier by the poachers. The painting has been lost, but Forbes' description of it survives:
  I shave also the opportunity of adding the portrait of an extraordinary Tyger [sic], shot a few months ago by the Nairs in this neighborhood, and presented to the chief as a great curiosity. It was entirely black yet striped in the manner of the Royal-Tyger, with shades of a still darker hue, like the richest black, glossed with purple. My pencil is very deficient in displaying these mingled tints; nor do I know how to describe them better than by the difference you would observe in a black cloth variegated with shades of a rich velvet.
  This corresponds to ghost mark as similar to those on black panthers.
  A black tiger from the East Indies was exhibited in the Tower of London menagerie; however, it was more likely to have been a black leopard. The 1786 book, "Sophie in London" records Sophie's impressions of this cat: "The all-black tiger, which Mr. Hastings brought with him from the East Indies is most handsome, but his tigery glance is horrible." The Observer newspaper on 27 January 1844 records a black tiger (again, probably a black leopard) intended as a present for Napoleon from the King of Java. This tiger was displayed at Kendrick's menagerie in Piccadilly, London.
  In March 1846, the naturalist C.T. Buckland reported a black tiger in the Chittagong Hills (now in Bangladesh) where it was raiding cattle. It was shot with a poisoned arrow and its body was later discovered but it was too decomposed to skin. Buckland's account for The Field,  which was printed in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (JBNHS) during 1889, documented the case of a black tiger killed at Chittagong.  The report is even more dubious because over 40 years had elapsed between the actual event and the report; all of the party members that could have corroborated his story had died.
  In September 1895, a very clear sighting of a supposed black tiger was made by Colonel S. Capper using a hunter's telescope; the tiger disappeared into the jungle. The presence of black leopards in the area and the difficulty of accurately judging size makes this a dubious report though. The various accounts of black tiger sightings were detailed in "The Wildlife of India" by E.P. Gee.
caption: Title page of volume 1, number 1, of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 1886.
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