“The hills of the district abound in almost every South-Indian species of the ferae naturae” is the first line about the mammalia in The Manual of the Coimbatore District by F.A. Nicholson published in 1887.
The document throws light on the diverse fauna of the then Coimbatore district in the Presidency of Madras, which was spread across 7,842 square miles comprising 10 taluks, namely Bhavani, Coimbatore, Dharapuram, Erode, Karur, Kollegal, Palladam, Pollachi, Sathyamangalam, and Udumalpet.
As per the document, the list of mammalia was taken from a sketch written in 1875 by Rev. F.W. Jackson titled ‘The Mammals of the Coimbatore District’.
It names tiger as an inhabitant of all the jungle areas of the district and their numbers multiplied to a most alarming extent in some of the taluks bordering Moyar and Bhavani rivers.
As per the document, Captain Caulfeild was appointed tiger-slayer to the presidency by the Madras Government in the autumn of 1873 and confined his operations to the Coimbatore Collectorate. Using poison, traps and other devices, the officer materially thinned the ranks of the ‘striped’ family as 93 tigers and 32 panthers were killed in the district in 1874. As a result, only one man was killed and the number of cattle preyed on by the carnivore fell from 2,183 in 1873 to 265 in 1874, says the document.
While Sirumugai forests is the only place where hyena is found in the present Coimbatore district, the historical document says that the scavenger animal was “not uncommon” in the district as it was found on the low hills near Madukkarai. Nilgai or the blue bull was found in the low scrub jungle on the Bhavani and Moyar rivers, some 25 or 30 miles east of Mettupalayam.
The chronicler records that the panther, in an apparent reference to leopard, which was found in scrub jungle and among the rocky hills throughout the district, was frequently and erroneously being called the ‘cheetah’.
The document mentions that Felis jubata’ (the cheetah) was only sparsely distributed over a small portion of the district, bordering on the river Bhavani, about Vellamundi and Kottamangalam, it further states.
P. Jeganathan, Scientist, Nature Conservation Foundation, affirms that this is a reference to the Asiatic cheetah, which was declared extinct in India in 1952.
Another interesting observation by the chronicler is that of the south-Indian hedgehog, which he had seen in large numbers at Podanur, and records that a woman friend of his kept two in her store room for months to kill the cockroaches.
