While tigers are nog at all common fu north and central China to-day, they must have been plentiful enough in former times, for Chinese writ. ings, legends and folk-tales are full of, references to these fearsome Tt is mot generally known to Wes-itemers that the tiger is not really Jo. tropical animal, but a_northern animal which in. the course of time Jsprend southward into the tropics in India, Malaya, and the Malayan Archipelago.
The spmi-fossilized bones of tigers have been found in Northern Siberia and on some of the islands of the Arctic Ocean, and in historical times tigers. were abundant throughout Siberia, Northern Mongolia and Central Asia westward as for as the Caucasus Mountains and southward into Persia, in all of which areas they still occur, though now by no means common in the latter regions. That the Huns hunted tigers several centuries. before the Christian Era, indicated in their art, these animals forming a common motif in the famous Ordos Bronzes and as decorations on fabrics of that far distant period found in graves which have been excavated recently by the Russian explorer Kosloff.
The Mongols under Genghis and his nephew Kubla Khan not only hunted tigers but used them in the chase as cheetahs are used today in. Africa, Arabia and Afghani tan, This. we know from certain passages in the writings of the
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