African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

CHAPTER III

How often has not the single word "Simba," "Tauw," "Shumba," "Silouān," or any other native African synonym for the lion, sent the blood tingling through the veins of a European traveller or hunter; or when whispered or screamed in the darkness of the night in a native village or encampment, brought terror to the hearts of dark-skinned men and women!

When met in the light of day, a lion may be bold and aggressive, retiring, or even cowardly, according to its individual character and the circumstances under which it is encountered; but no one, I think, who has had anything like a long experience of the nature and habits of these great carnivora can doubt that by night, particularly on a dark rainy night, a hungry lion is a terrible and terrifying beast to deal with.

One day towards the end of the year 1878, my friend Mr. Alfred Cross left our main camp on the Umfuli river in Mashunaland, and taking an empty waggon with him, went off to buy corn at some native villages about twenty miles distant. That same afternoon he outspanned early near a small stream running into the Umfuli, as a heavy thunderstorm was threatening. A kraal was made for the oxen, behind which the Kafir boys arranged a shelter for themselves of boughs and dry grass as a protection from the anticipated downpour of rain. They also collected a lot of dry wood in order to be able to keep up a good fire. The waggon-driver, a native of the Cape Colony, made his bed under the waggon, to the front wheel of which Mr. Cross's horse was fastened. As one of the hind oxen kept breaking out of the kraal, it was tied up by itself to the hind yoke close in front of the waggon. The trek chain, with the other yokes attached to it, was then stretched straight out along the ground in front of the waggon. Soon after dark the thunderstorm, which had been gathering all the afternoon, burst forth with terrific violence. The rain fell in sheets, soon extinguishing the fires that had been lighted by the Kafirs, and the blinding flashes of lightning which continually lit up both heaven and earth with blue-white light were quickly succeeded by crashing peals of thunder.

The storm had lasted some time and the rain had almost ceased, when the ox which was tied up all alone to the after yoke of the waggon began to jump backwards and forwards over the disselboom—the waggon pole.

Cross, who was then lying down inside the waggon, raised himself to a sitting position, and whilst calling to the ox to quiet it, crawled forward, and raising the fore sheet, looked out. Just then a vivid flash of lightning lit up the inky blackness of the night just for one brief moment. But the brilliant light revealed to my friend every detail of the surrounding landscape, and showed him with startling distinctness the form of a big male lion lying flat on the ground not ten yards in front of the frightened ox, which it would probably already have seized, had it not been for Cross's loud shouting. The lion had been no doubt creeping silently towards its would-be prey, which had already become aware of its proximity, when my friend's voice caused it to halt and lie flat on the ground watching. By this time Cross's dog, a well-bred pointer, which had been lying on the driver's blankets under the waggon, had become aware that something was wrong—though the lion was no doubt making its approach against the wind—and was standing just behind the ox, growling.

Directly the position of the lion was revealed to him by the lightning, Cross seized his rifle, and calling to the waggon-driver to jump up and hold his horse, took aim in the direction of the crouching brute, waiting for another flash of lightning. This was not long delayed, and showed the lion still lying flat on the ground close in front of the waggon. Cross fired at once. Encouraged by the report of the rifle, poor Ponto rushed boldly forward, past the terrified ox, into the black night, barking loudly. A yelp of fright or pain suddenly succeeded the bold barking of the dog, and poor Ponto's voice was stilled for ever. He had rushed right into the lion's jaws, and had been instantly killed and carried off. Fires were then made up again, but the lion, apparently satisfied with a somewhat light repast, did not give any further trouble. On the following morning Cross could find no part of Ponto but the head. All the rest of him had apparently been eaten.

I remember even to-day, and with perfect distinctness, though I have not seen it for many years, a certain picture in Gordon Cumming's well-known book on African hunting, and the fearful fascination it always had for me when I was a small boy. That picture represented a great gaunt lion in the act of seizing one of the hunter's Hottentot servants—poor Hendrik—as he lay asleep by the camp fire; but it left to the imagination all the horror and agony of mind suffered by the poor wretch, when so rudely awakened at dead of night and swiftly dragged away into the darkness to a cruel death, in spite of the gallant attempts of his comrades to save him.

During the sixty odd years that have elapsed since this tragedy was enacted on the banks of the Limpopo, many a similar incident has taken place. Some of these occurrences have come within the knowledge of, and been described by, European travellers and hunters, yet these have been but isolated cases, and can only represent a very small percentage of the number of natives that have been dragged away from their camp fires, or even killed in their huts, by hungry lions within recent times.

As a rule, I think, a lion seizes a sleeping man by the head, and in that case, unless it is a very old and weakly animal, death must be usually instantaneous, as its great fang teeth will be driven into the brain through the thickest negro skull.

I have known of two instances of men having been seized at night by the shoulder. This, I think, is likely to happen to a sleeping man lying on his side with one shoulder raised, especially if his recumbent form should happen to be covered with a blanket, in which case the most prominent part of him would very likely be mistaken by a lion for his head.

In the early 'nineties of the last century, two troopers of the British South Africa Company's Police started one afternoon from the neighbourhood of Lo Magondi's kraal to ride into Salisbury, the capital of Mashunaland, a distance of about seventy miles. They rode until dark, and then off-saddling their horses, tied them to a tree, and after having had something to eat and cooked a pot of tea, lay down by the side of the camp fire they had kindled, intending to sleep until the moon rose and then continue their journey by its light. About midnight, however, and when it was very dark, for the moon had not yet risen, a prowling lion came up to their lonely bivouac, and, disregarding their horses, seized one of them by the shoulder and at once dragged him away into the darkness. His companion, awakened by his cries, quickly realised what had happened, and snatching up his rifle, ran to his friend's assistance and fired two or three shots into the air in quick succession. This so startled the lion that it dropped its prospective supper and made off. The wounded man, it was found, had received a severe bite in the shoulder when the lion first seized him, but fortunately had not suffered any further injuries, and was able to proceed with his friend to Salisbury as soon as the moon had risen. He had to be sent to the Hospital on his arrival there, as, although his hurts were not very serious, any wound indicted by the teeth of a lion is, as a rule, very difficult to heal unless carefully attended to at once and cauterised with a strong lotion of carbolic acid. Dr. Livingstone has described how he suffered for years from the bite of a lion; and I have myself seen wounds from the teeth of one of these animals in a horse's neck, which had never been properly attended to, still suppurating thirteen months after they had been inflicted; whilst, on the other hand, I have seen wounds from the bite of a lion, which were cauterised at once, heal up very quickly and never reopen.

Of all the lion stories that I have ever heard or read, I think none equals in dramatic interest the thrilling narrative of Mr. J. H. Patterson's[4] experiences with two man-eaters during the construction of the Uganda Railway in 1898. This very remarkable story, a brief account of which I first read some years ago with the most absorbing interest in the Field newspaper, has now, I am glad to say, been incorporated in the record of his experiences in East Africa which Colonel Patterson has recently published under the title of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo. Mr. Patterson (as he then was) at last succeeded in ridding the country of both of these dread beasts, but not before they had killed and eaten twenty-eight Indian coolies employed upon the construction of the Uganda Railway, and caused such a panic through the country-side, that at one time it looked as if the building of the railway would have to be abandoned altogether for the time being.

The death of Mr. C. H. Ryall, the Assistant Superintendent of the East African Police Force, who was killed by a man-eating lion inside a railway carriage on the Uganda Railway, is also a most interesting episode, as it shows how extraordinarily bold a hungry lion may become, when in search of prey during the hours of darkness.

When in East Africa a few years ago, I met both the other two Europeans (Mr. Huebner, a German, and Mr. Parenti, an Italian) who were in the carriage with Mr. Ryall when he was killed, and I heard the story of the tragedy from their lips.

The railway carriage in question, which contained a small saloon and an adjoining servants' compartment, had been pulled on to a siding, close to a small station on the Uganda Railway, in order to give its occupants the chance of getting a shot at a man-eating lion which had lately been giving trouble in the neighbourhood—either as it came prowling about during the night or by hunting it up the next morning. There was a small window on each side of the little saloon, and a sliding door at the end of the carriage. Both the windows and the door were wide open. Mr. Ryall took the first watch, and seems to have taken up a position on one of the seats of the carriage, with his back to the open window. His head and shoulders would therefore probably have been visible to the eyes of a nocturnal animal from outside.

Mr. Huebner turned in and went to sleep on one of the top berths in the carriage, and Mr. Parenti made his bed on the floor. It is probable, I think, that Mr. Ryall also went to sleep after a time. What happened afterwards I will now relate as it was told to me by Mr. Parenti. "I was awakened from a sound sleep by the sensation of a weight holding me down on the floor, and for a moment was unable to move. Then the weight was taken off me, and I raised my head with a jerk. My face immediately came in contact with a soft hairy body, and I became conscious of a disagreeable smell. In an instant I realised that there was a lion in the railway carriage, and that at that moment it was killing poor Mr. Ryall, as I heard a sort of gurgling noise, the only sound he ever made."

Mr. Huebner seems to have awakened at the same time, and to have at once jumped down on to the floor of the carriage, where he and Mr. Parenti and the lion were all mixed up together. At this time the weight of the lion and the struggling men combined slightly tipped the carriage to one side, causing the sliding door to close automatically, and thus materially increasing the horror of the situation. Mr. Parenti, as soon as he could collect his thoughts, made his escape from the carriage through the open window opposite to the one against which poor Mr. Ryall had been sitting when the lion seized him, and Mr. Huebner burst open the door communicating with the smaller compartment occupied by Mr. Ryall's two Indian servants, who, having become aware that there was a lion in the other room with the "Sahibs," were holding the door against the crowd with all their strength. Mr. Huebner, however, who is a heavy, powerful man, soon overcame their resistance.

To do it justice, this lion does not seem to have had any wish to make itself unnecessarily disagreeable. It wanted something to eat, but, having got hold of Mr. Ryall, seems never to have paid the smallest attention to any one else. In all probability, I think, it had seen its victim's back and head from outside against the open window, and, coming round to the open door, had entered the carriage and made straight for him, treading on Mr. Parenti's sleeping form as it crossed the floor. It seized Mr. Ryall by the throat just under the jaw, and must have reared itself up, probably resting its fore-paws on the seat of the carriage, to have done so. Mr. Ryall must have been killed by the first bite almost instantaneously, as he never seems to have struggled or made any noise but a low gurgling sound.

The windows of the carriages on the Uganda Railway are small, but after having killed Mr. Ryall, this lion—a big male—succeeded in carrying off his body through the comparatively small opening. It probably never relaxed its hold on his throat until it had got his dead body safely out of the carriage and pulled it away to some distance.

The half-eaten remains of the unfortunate man were recovered the next day nearly a mile away from the railway carriage in which he had met his death; but the lion was nowhere to be found, and in spite of a large reward offered for its destruction, it was some time before this bold and dangerous beast was disposed of. At last, however, it was caught alive in a big cage-trap made by a Mr. Costello, who at that time was the station-master at Makindu, on the Uganda Railway. After having been photographed, this lion was shot. This photograph was shown me by Mr. Costello himself, who told me that the captured animal was old and mangy, with very worn teeth and claws, and a short, scrubby mane. He thought that there could be no reasonable doubt that it was the lion that had killed poor Mr. Ryall, but of course nobody can be absolutely certain on this point.

Natives living in very small communities, in wild districts where game being still abundant, lions also are consequently fairly numerous, are often troubled at night by these animals. In such cases a man-eating lion usually proves to be an old and almost worn-out beast, which having grown too weak to catch and kill its usual prey, has been driven by hunger to approach the haunts of men. Urged on by its desperate need, such a lion knows no fear, and will not hesitate to enter a small native village or even to force its way into a hut in search of food.

In 1879, whilst hunting elephants in the country to the east of the Chobi or Quito river, I met with a very primitive tribe of natives living in families or very small communities in isolated villages along the bank of the river. Their huts were of the flimsiest description, being formed of a light framework of poles, over which a few grass mats had been stretched; but the two or three, up to half a dozen, ill-made huts which formed each village were always surrounded and protected by a carefully made stockade, the poles forming which were all sharpened at the end and hardened by having been charred in the fire, and so placed that they slanted outwards and would have been very difficult to surmount from the outside. The natives informed me that they had taken this trouble as a defence against lions.

In April 1878 a lion entered a small Banyai village near the river Umay, in Northern Matabeleland, a short time after I had left it, and, not being able to make its way into any of the huts through the small doorways, all of which had been very carefully barricaded, climbed on the roof of one of them, and tearing away the grass thatching, forced its way in from the top. There were three or four women inside the hut, and it killed them all; but, having gorged itself, was apparently unable to make its escape through the roof again, and was speared to death by the men of the village the next morning through the framework of the hut, after the mud plaster had been removed in places.

A native servant of my own, whom I had left behind in this village, was present when this lion was killed, and he told me that, as soon as it was dead, a huge bonfire was built, on which the carcase of the man-eater was thrown, and the fire kept up until it was quite consumed.

The most cunning and destructive man-eating lion—probably because it was not an old and weakly animal, but in the prime of life—that I ever heard of in South Africa was one which once haunted the neighbourhood of the Majili river, a tributary of the central Zambesi from the north. I gave some account of the doings of this bold and ferocious beast in the course of an article which I contributed to the pages of the Fortnightly Review some twenty years ago, and as I have the kind permission of the editor and proprietor of that publication to do so, I will now retell the story as I originally heard it from one of my own native servants shortly after the occurrences related took place.

In the early part of 1886 two half-caste elephant-hunters, Henry Wall and Black Jantje—the latter for several years both before and after this time a trusted servant of my own—crossed the Zambesi at its junction with the Quito or Chobi, in order to hunt elephants in the country to the north between the Majili and Ungwesi rivers.

They soon heard from the natives that there was a man-eating lion in the district which had already killed several people, and they were therefore careful to see that a strong fence was made every night behind their camp, and sufficient dry wood collected to keep up good fires during the hours of darkness. The two half-civilised hunters were accustomed to sleep by themselves within a strong semicircular fence, the open end of which was protected by a large fire. All but one of their native boys—wild Batongas and Masubias—slept together, lying in a row with a strong fence behind them and a succession of fires near their feet. The boy who would not sleep with the others, always lay by one or other of the fires by himself.

One night, Henry Wall, who was a very light sleeper, and had perhaps been dreaming of lions, was awakened, as he afterwards declared, by the sound of a low growl or purr close to him. Springing to his feet, he shouted out, "De leeuw is hier!" ("The lion's here!"); "wake up, Jantje!" But Jantje and all the Kafirs were fast asleep, and it was not until they had been awakened and questioned that it was discovered that the man who had been lying by one of the fires all alone was gone. Where he had gone and why was not left long in doubt, for almost immediately a lion was heard eating his remains close behind the encampment. Henry Wall and Jantje at once fired in the direction of the sound, on which the lion retired to a safer distance with its prey.

As soon as it was broad daylight, the hunters took up the spoor of the lion, which was, they told me, quite easy to follow through the dewy grass. It was not long before they saw it walking slowly along with its head half-turned, holding the dead man by one shoulder, so that his legs dragged at its side. As soon as it became aware that it was being followed, it dropped its prey, and wheeling round, stood looking at its pursuers, twitching its tail and growling angrily.

Henry Wall, who was a very good shot and a cool and courageous man, now tried to fire, but the old, clumsy, muzzle-loading elephant gun he was using only snapped the cap. At this juncture Jantje, who was a little to one side, was unable to fire because there was a bush in his way, and before Henry Wall could get another cap on the nipple of his gun, the Kafir who carried his second weapon fired at and missed the lion, which instantly turned and, running into a patch of bush, made good its escape.

On examination, it was found that the dead man had been seized by the head. He must have been killed instantaneously, as the two upper canine teeth had been driven through the top of the skull, whilst one of the lower ones had entered beneath the jaw and broken the bone. During the night the corpse had been disembowelled and all the flesh eaten off the thighs and buttocks.

A few days later, a native family was attacked not far from the scene of the episode I have just recounted, and almost certainly by the same lion.

All over Africa, wherever game is plentiful, it is customary for the natives, at the season when their crops are ripening, to build huts in their fields, in which they spend the night and endeavour to keep buffaloes, elephants, and all kinds of antelopes out of their corn by shouting and beating tom-toms. The huts are often built on the top of platforms raised ten or twelve feet above the ground and reached by a ladder. The native family in question occupied two huts—a large one built on the ground and a small one on the top of a platform. The large hut was occupied by a woman and her two children, whilst her husband kept watch alone in the little open hut above.

One night the dread man-eater of the Majili came prowling round, and scenting the native on the platform, either sprang up and seized him with its teeth, or more probably, I think, half clambered up by the help of the ladder, and dragged him from his shelter with its claws. At any rate, it bore him to the ground and speedily killed him, but not before he had made a good deal of noise, as reported afterwards by his children. His wife, awakened by the cries of her husband, opened the door of her hut and rushed out, leaving the two children inside. The lion at once left the man, who was then dead, and seizing the woman, quickly killed her. It never returned to the body of the man at all, but ate all the fleshy parts of the woman, retiring into the bush before daylight, and never revisiting the corpses.

All through the dry season this lion kept the natives in the neighbourhood of the Majili river in a constant state of alarm, and whilst adding steadily to the number of its victims, baffled every attempt made to hunt it down and destroy it. After having been away for some months, hunting elephants in the country farther north, Henry Wall and Black Jantje once again camped on the Majili river on their way back to the Zambesi, and for the second time the man-eater paid them a visit. This time Jantje was awake, and hearing, as he told me, a low purring growl, jumped up, calling out, "Daat's de leeuw wieder!" ("That's the lion again!").

At the same time one of the Kafirs stood up holding his hand to his head.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Jantje, going up to him.

"I don't know," answered the man; "something hit me on the head."

At this moment Jantje saw by the light of the fire blood running down his neck, and called out, "Wake, wake, it was the lion I heard! Wake, wake, and see if every one is here!"

It soon appeared that one of the Kafirs was missing, and this is no doubt what had happened. The lion must have crept or sprung in amongst the sleepers, and seizing one of them by the head, must have killed him instantly and carried him off. But in doing so it must have struck the man lying next him on the head with one of its paws, and inflicted a slight scalp wound with one of its claws. The body of the man who had been carried off was not recovered, because, as Henry Wall and Jantje told me, the rest of the Kafirs would give them no assistance in following up the lion the next day.

This dangerous man-eater was at last mortally wounded by the spears of two young men whom it attacked in broad daylight close to a small native village. One of these youths died the same evening from the mauling he received in the encounter, but he had driven his spear into the lion's chest when it attacked him, and his companion had also struck it in the side with a light throwing spear. The next day, all the men from the two or three little villages in the neighbourhood turned out and followed up the bloody tracks of the wounded lion. They had not far to go, for the grim beast lay dead, with the two spears still sticking in it, within a short distance from the spot where it had attacked the two young men the previous day. As is the custom when man-eating lions are killed in the interior of Africa, a great quantity of dry wood was then collected, and a huge fire lighted, on which the carcase was thrown and utterly consumed.

There is one rather curious fact in connection with the history of this notorious man-eating lion which I omitted from the first account I wrote of its doings, but which I will now relate, as it is of interest. Soon after dark on the night of the second attack on their camp, Henry Wall and Jantje and all their boys heard the sudden rush of an affrighted herd of buffaloes, which had been feeding in the open ground between their camp and the Majili river. Suddenly there was the loud and agonised bellow of a buffalo in pain and terror, and they all knew that one of these animals had been seized by a lion. The following morning they found a buffalo cow lying dead not two hundred yards from their camp, with its head twisted in under it and its neck dislocated. It had the claw-marks usual in such cases over the muzzle and on the shoulder, showing the manner in which it had been seized, but after having been killed it had not been touched. The tracks of the lion, however, led from the carcase of the buffalo to the hunters' camp, and I think that there can be no doubt that it was the same animal which killed the buffalo that a few hours later carried off a human being. If so, it proves two things. Firstly, that this man-eating lion must have been in its prime, for it requires a strong and vigorous male lion to kill a full-grown buffalo cow or a heavy bullock neatly and quickly by breaking its neck; and secondly, that it preferred human flesh to that of a buffalo. It must either have seen the gleam of the camp fires for the first time immediately after it had killed the buffalo, and abandoned the carcase in the hope of obtaining more succulent food, or, if it was aware of the neighbourhood of the hunters' camp before it attacked the buffalo, it must have killed the latter out of sheer mischief.

Though similar cases of lions becoming confirmed man-eaters when in the prime of life and still in the enjoyment of their full strength and vigour do from time to time occur—the celebrated Tsavo man-eaters which played such havoc amongst the construction camps on the Uganda Railway were reported to have been far from old—yet it cannot be denied that in the vast majority of cases a lion only takes to killing human beings in its declining years, and when its strength is failing.

On this subject, Dr. Livingstone wrote many years ago: "A man-eater is invariably an old lion, and when he overcomes his fear of man so far as to come to villages for goats, the people remark, 'His teeth are worn, he will soon kill men.' They at once acknowledge the necessity of instant action and turn out to kill him."

Speaking generally, nothing truer could have been written than these sentences; but there are exceptions to every rule, and when a strong and vigorous lion does take to preying upon human beings, it is naturally not so easy to hunt down and destroy as would be an old and weakly beast, whose "teeth are worn."

An adult male lion is probably possessed of greater strength in proportion to its size and weight than any other African animal. It will kill with astonishing ease and dexterity a full-grown buffalo cow or the heaviest bullock, and probably sometimes a buffalo bull or a giraffe. I never remember, however, to have seen the carcase of an old buffalo bull that had palpably been killed by a single lion, whilst I have shot several buffalo bulls that had escaped from lions after receiving very severe wounds from their teeth and claws. I once had a very good opportunity of noting the manner in which a big male lion killed a heavy ox, which would certainly have scaled more than twice its own weight. This ox was killed during the night, but as the lion was immediately driven from the carcase, it had no time to inflict any wound upon it other than those made when it first seized its victim, and the ground being soft from recent rain, every step taken by both the ox and the lion during the brief struggle was plainly visible. The lion had evidently crept close up to where the ox was lying (within forty yards of my waggon), and had either attacked it where it lay or just as it was rising to its feet. It had not jumped upon its victim, but throughout the struggle had always kept its hind-feet on the ground. The only wounds that had been inflicted on the ox were claw-marks on the nose and on the top of the left shoulder-blade, and the lion had evidently seized it by the muzzle with its left paw and on the top of the shoulder with the right, and had simply held it, pulling its head in towards its chest. The ox had plunged forward, dragging the lion with it for a few yards, and had then fallen with its head twisted right under it and its neck dislocated. Whether the lion had broken the ox's neck by its own strength, or whether the dislocation was due to the way in which it fell with its head twisted in under it, I cannot say; but my experience is that when a single lion tries to kill an ox or a buffalo, it invariably seizes it over the muzzle with one paw, and usually succeeds in either breaking its victim's neck or causing it to break it itself by its own weight in falling. When several lions attack an ox or buffalo, they will often bite and tear it all over and take a long time to kill it. Upon several occasions I have listened to the protracted bellowing of buffaloes being thus mauled to death. Upon one occasion a party of five lions stampeded my oxen as they lay round the waggon, and very soon seized and pulled down one of them. The wretched creature bellowed most fearfully, and must have been suffering terribly. Hastily lighting torches of long dry grass, several of my Kafirs and I ran to help it. The blazing grass scared the lions off, and they left the ox before the light of the torches reached them. The wounded animal immediately got up and rushed off again into the darkness, but had not gone far before its loud bellowing told us the lions had got hold of it once more. They took some time to kill it, but its agonised bellowings gradually died away in low moans, until at length all was again quiet. During the approach of these five lions to my camp, and the subsequent chase and long-drawn-out killing of the ox, not one of them made the slightest sound; and as far as my own personal experience goes, with one exception, whenever lions have reconnoitred or attacked my camp at night, and bitten or killed any of my native followers or cattle or horses, they have done all their stalking and killing without making a sound. If disturbed, however, they always growl loudly. On the occasion I have referred to as an exception to this rule, three lions—as we learnt the next morning by the spoor—came quite close up to my bivouac one night in Northern Mashunaland, and one of them gave a very loud roar which woke us all up. I was travelling at the time with a small cart and eight oxen, which were tied to the yokes, and were right in the open, unprotected either by fires or any kind of kraal or fence. My two horses were tied to one of the wheels, and my few native servants and myself were lying close to them, with a small fence of soft bush behind us. The three lions that came so near us in the night could not have been very hungry, or they would assuredly have seized one of my oxen. Perhaps the one that so suddenly roared only did so with the idea of frightening the oxen, and if one of them had broken the raw hide thong with which it was fastened to the yoke, and run off away from our camp, all three of them would very likely have pursued and killed it. Fortunately, neither my oxen nor my horses showed much fear on this occasion, and although the former pulled a bit, they did not break their thongs, and we soon quieted them and then built up some big fires. The lions passed on up the little river near which we were camped, and before long began to roar loudly, a pretty good sign, I think, that they had already dined and were not hunting. Why, when a family of four or five lions are hunting together, one of their number being an old male, they should kill an ox so much less artistically than the old male would have done, if he had been alone, I do not know. Possibly the eagerness of each member of the party renders a scientific attack by any one of them impossible, or perhaps the older lions allow the younger ones to do the killing for practice. There is no doubt, I think, that lions know that the head, throat, and the back of the neck are the most vital spots in all animals on which they prey. Human beings are nearly always seized by the head or neck; horses, donkeys, and zebras are almost invariably killed by bites in the back of the neck just behind the ears, or by bites in the throat; whilst they either dislocate the necks of heavy animals like buffaloes, or hold them in such a way that they can hardly help falling and breaking their own necks. The lion which broke the neck of one of my oxen, as I have described above, escaped punishment when it returned to the carcase the following evening owing to my rifle missing fire. It then visited a mining camp close at hand, and forcing its way into an enclosure in which there were fourteen sheep and goats and one calf, it killed every one of these unfortunate animals. I shot this lion early the following morning and then examined its victims. Every one of them, the calf as well as the sheep and goats, had been killed by a single bite in the head. In each case the upper canine teeth had been driven through the top of the skull or the back of the neck just behind the ears. I once came on a young elephant only a few minutes after it had been killed by a lion. The only wounds I could find were deep tooth-marks in the throat.

Lions kill and eat every kind of wild animal in Africa with the exception of the Pachydermata—though they occasionally catch and kill a young elephant or rhinoceros that has been separated from its mother—but as long as buffaloes and zebras are plentiful in the countries they inhabit, they will kill far more of these than of any other animal. Quaggas and Burchell's zebras probably formed their chief food on the plains of the Cape Colony, the Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal before those countries were settled by Europeans; whilst farther north, where great numbers of buffaloes frequented the neighbourhood of every river, the lions lived almost entirely on these animals, following the herds in all their wanderings, just as in North America the prairie wolves were always in attendance on the bisons. Giraffes are sometimes killed by lions, but according to my experience only very rarely; no doubt because they must be very awkward animals to pull down, and also for the reason that, generally speaking, they inhabit dry, waterless stretches of country, throughout which game is usually only sparsely distributed and into which lions do not penetrate.

Although I have excluded the Pachydermata from the list of animals on which lions prey, there nevertheless seems to be good evidence that these carnivora do sometimes attack and kill good-sized cow elephants.

I well remember an old Boer hunter, Michael Engelbreght, telling me of an unsuccessful attack made by lions on a cow elephant within a short distance of the shooting hole where he was lying one night watching for elephants coming to drink at Tamasanka vley on the old road to the Zambesi. This incident had occurred only a few nights before I met Engelbreght at the vley in question. But it happened so long ago (in 1874) that I cannot remember anything more than that the elephant was held up by the lions for some hours, and that the trumpeting of the former was accompanied by the loud growling of the latter, and that when my informant examined the ground where the combat had taken place, the next morning, he found a great deal of thorn bush trampled down by the elephant, and some blood on the ground. The former, however, although probably it had been badly bitten in the trunk and legs, had kept the lions from its throat, and had finally beaten them off and made good its retreat. Michael Engelbreght was at that time a man of over sixty years of age, and as he had been a hunter from his youth upwards, in the golden days of South African hunting, he must have had a vast experience of the habits of wild animals, but I well remember that he spoke of this incident of an elephant having been attacked by lions as wonderful and almost incredible.

I have, however, heard of another case of an elephant having been attacked and killed by lions.

When passing through Kimberley in 1895, I met my old friend Mr. F. S. Arnot, who has done such splendid work as a pioneer missionary in Central Africa, and who is an absolutely reliable man, and he then told me a story of an elephant having been killed by lions near Lake Mweru. Hearing last year that Mr. Arnot was in England, I wrote and asked him if he would kindly tell me this story again, as I wanted to put it on record. In the course of his answer to my letter Mr. Arnot wrote: "The lion story I told you may appear rather tall to some, but when travelling between Lakes Tanganyika and Mweru, in November 1894, and when skirting the northern end of the great Mweru Marsh—a regular elephants' stronghold—my men suddenly left me en masse—they were a raw set of men—returning presently with elephant flesh. They then told me that our guides having informed them that they had that morning seen six hungry lions attack and pull down a full-grown cow elephant, just ahead of where we then were, they had left me so suddenly in order to drive the lions off and get some meat. Unfortunately, I did not see the lions myself, but there could be no doubt about the truth of our guides' statement, for I saw the lions' spoor and the carcase of the dead elephant. The tusks were very small, but my men brought them. They may have weighed from four to five pounds each."

As the tusks were so small, this elephant could hardly have been a full-grown cow; but it must have been a good-sized animal, probably a young cow about three-parts grown. It is a great pity that Mr. Arnot did not examine the carcase carefully and ascertain exactly how the elephant had been killed. As the natives, however, asserted positively that they had seen six lions attack and kill it, and as Mr. Arnot is fully convinced that their story was true, I think it ought to be accepted as a fact, especially as cases of full-grown elephants having been killed by tigers in India and Burma have been put on record.

CHAPTER IV

For the first few months after Mr. Rhodes's pioneers entered Mashunaland in 1890, I kept as accurate an account as I could of the number of horses, donkeys, oxen, sheep, goats, and pigs that were killed by lions, and it soon amounted to more than two hundred. During the same time two white men were killed and several others severely injured by lions. The saddest case was that of a young man named Teale, who had come to Mashunaland in the hope of making his fortune by market-gardening. He was outspanned one night near a native village not far from Umtali, where he had gone to buy grain. His four oxen were tied to the yokes, and he with his native driver was sleeping on the ground beneath his two-wheeled cart, when he was seized and carried off by a lion. What the lion did not eat of him, the hyænas probably got, as nothing was ever found but his head and one foot with the boot still on it.

A rather curious incident happened the following year at a farm on the Hanyani river about forty miles from Salisbury. The owner of the farm—from whom I heard this story (which was fully corroborated by his native servants)—was breeding pigs, and had a large number of these animals in a series of pens, separated from one another by low partitions, but all under one thatched roof. One night a lioness managed to force her way into the piggery between two poles, and after having satisfied her hunger, was apparently unable to find her way out again, and either became angry or frightened, or else must have been overcome with an almost insatiable lust for killing. At any rate, she wandered backwards and forwards through the pens and killed almost all the pigs, over a hundred altogether, each one with a bite in the head or the back of the neck. She had only eaten portions of two young pigs. She managed to effect her escape before daylight, but returned the following night, and was shot by a set gun. I saw her skull, which was that of a full-grown lioness with good teeth.

There appears to be a considerable difference of opinion as to the means usually adopted by lions to effect an entrance by night into a cattle kraal or a camp surrounded by a fence. They are often said to leap boldly over high fences and stockades. In my own experience I have not known them do this. They will walk through any opening in an enclosure, but in the absence of such a means of ingress, I have always found that they got inside by creeping through the fence, even when it was low and very thick and thorny. I have known a lion to walk round and round a stockaded cattle kraal, and at last force its way in by pressing two poles apart and squeezing through the opening thus made. Should lions, however, be disturbed and suddenly fired at whilst feeding on a bullock which they have killed inside an enclosure, they will almost always jump over the fence in their hurry to escape.

I have never seen any evidence of a lion's killing its prey by striking it a heavy blow with one of its paws, and I believe that it always endeavours to kill by biting, and only uses its claws for holding or pulling an animal to its mouth. I have seen both a lion and a lioness bayed by dogs repeatedly throw out their fore-paws like lightning when one of these latter came near them; but the movement was not in the nature of a blow, but rather an attempt to hook one of the dogs in their claws and draw it to them. Lions, I think, must often lose their prey through the very sharpness of their claws, which cut like knives through the skin and flesh of a heavy animal in motion. I have known several instances of a lion overtaking a horse that had only had a short start. In such a case a lion will not land with a flying leap right on to a horse's back. It gallops close along the ground until it is almost under the horse's tail, and then, rearing itself up on its hind-legs, seizes it on either flank, endeavouring to hold it with the protruded claws of its great fore-paws. But almost invariably in such a case it fails to stop a galloping horse, its claws simply cutting great gashes through skin and flesh. I once saw a lion chasing four koodoos in broad daylight, though on a cold cloudy morning. It was galloping after them flat along the ground as hard as it could go, and looked like an enormous mastiff, especially as, though a male, it had but little mane. On another occasion, late one evening, I saw a lion and two lionesses lying in wait for some cattle of mine which were feeding towards them. Every now and then one or other of the lions would raise its head for a moment above the grass to see that the oxen were still coming on, lowering it again after one quick look. But for my intervention, these lions would probably have lain quite still until one or other of the oxen had fed close up to them, when they would have seized it by the head before it had time to turn. As lions nearly always hunt by scent and by night, they no doubt come up wind and approach as near as possible to a herd of game before making an attack, and probably often lie quite still until some animal feeds right on to them. In a country where game is plentiful, one would imagine that on a dark night lions must have but little trouble in securing food, and this is no doubt the case, as these carnivora become excessively fat wherever game is really plentiful.

When a lion charges, it does not come on in great leaps, nor does it strike its adversary a crushing blow with its paw. It comes along close to the ground like a great dog and bites, often so low that its forefeet can hardly be off the ground. Two Boer hunters of my acquaintance were both of them first bitten in the thigh. Shortly after the opening up of Mashunaland, too, an Englishman and a Dane were both seized in the same way by charging lions when hunting near the Pungwe river, in Portuguese East Africa, the latter dying from his wounds. In 1877 an Englishman was charged by an unwounded lion in Mashunaland and severely bitten in the groin; and in the following year, in the same locality, an old Hottentot servant of mine was badly bitten in the small of the back when running away from a charging lion which he had previously wounded. All these wounds were so low down that they must have been inflicted when the lion's forefeet were on the ground. On the other hand, many cases are on record of men standing facing charging lions being seized by the left forearm and sometimes by the shoulder. I do not remember to have heard of a case of a man being bitten in the head in a frontal charge, but one of my old servants, "Black Jantje," described to me very minutely the way in which he saw from a distance of only a few yards a Bushman killed by a wounded lion. When the lion charged every one ran, and just as "Black Jantje" reached a small tree, it dashed past him and the next instant caught up to a Bushman. It appeared, Jantje told me, to rear itself up, and placing a forepaw on each shoulder, gave the unfortunate savage a bite in the head. There were no wounds on the man's shoulders, but his skull was bitten through, and he was dashed to the ground with such violence that the skin was knocked off both his knees. The wounded lion made no further attack, but walking slowly away to the foot of a neighbouring tree, lay down and presently died within a few yards of its dead enemy. Two cases have come within my experience of lions charging home, and after having thrown their adversaries to the ground with one severe bite, leaving them without further molestation. I have known personally a number of men who had been mauled by lions. Every one of them was bitten, not struck by the lion's paw. Indeed, most of them were absolutely untouched by the lion's claws.

I once made the acquaintance of a fine old Boer hunter with whom I subsequently became very intimate, just after he had been very severely mauled by a lion. On asking him if he had felt much pain when the lion was biting him—he had eleven deep tooth wounds in the one thigh, besides others in the left arm and hand, and described the lion as having "chewed" him—he answered, "Ja, ik at byung sair gekrij" ("Yes, I felt much pain"); and some Kafirs have also told me that they have suffered much when being bitten by lions. It is possible that old Petrus Jacobs and my Kafir informants did really feel some pain at the time when they were being bitten, but in the case of Europeans, at any rate, who probably possess very highly-strung nervous systems, all the first-hand evidence I have been able to gather goes to prove that the bite of a lion or a tiger is practically painless. I imagine that the reason of this is, that the tremendous energy exerted by a lion in biting is equivalent to a heavy blow, which produces such a shock to the nervous system that all sensation is for the time being deadened, as it would be by a heavy blow from a sledge-hammer. I do not think that any kind of wounds from either blows or bullets or bites are likely to give any appreciable pain if inflicted swiftly when the blood is up; but they become painful enough very soon afterwards. When animals are killed quickly by lions, they too probably suffer very little, if at all, but no one who has listened, as I have done, to the bellowing of an ox or a buffalo being killed by inches could possibly say that such an animal's sufferings were not very great. I once had a fine stallion donkey killed by a hyæna within a short distance of my bivouac. It had first been seized between the hind-legs by its foul assailant, and its screams were perfectly heart-rending, and haunted me for a long time afterwards. My Kafirs and I ran to the poor brute's assistance at once, but were too late to save it, as a great hole had been torn in its belly, out of which half its entrails were hanging. No; it is useless for the scientist or the divine to tell an old hunter that there is no cruelty in nature, because the man who has spent many years of his life in a wild country knows by actual experience that such an assertion is not true. But let me return to my lions.

In appearance a full-maned, well-proportioned lion lying in peaceful repose in a European menagerie, gazing placidly and thoughtfully out of sleepy, brownish yellow eyes at the human crowd beyond the bars of its cage, is a truly dignified and majestic-looking animal; and if a fine specimen of a wild lion could be viewed at close quarters and at a moment when it was lying or standing with its massive mane-encircled head well raised, content with itself and all the world, after a good meal, and entirely unconscious of danger, it also would doubtless look both dignified and majestic, though I doubt if it could ever look quite so reposeful as the typical lion of the picture-books; for although wild lions are sometimes caught fast asleep, they are usually alert and watchful. I have spoken of the eyes of lions that have grown up in captivity as being brownish in colour and somewhat sleepy in expression, and that is the impression I have received from looking at the lions in the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park. On the other hand, I remember the colour of the eyes of wild lions as being of a flaming yellow, which retains its fierce brilliancy for many hours after death. Should a lion be shot through the loins and injured in such a way that, its hind-quarters being paralysed, it can be closely approached without danger, its fierce eyes seem ablaze with bright yellow flame, and give complete expression to the awful fury by which it is possessed. It is worth mentioning, I think, that when visiting the Zoological Gardens at Clifton, a couple of years ago, I noticed that the eyes of the lions and tigers there were in most cases of a flaming yellow, as they are, according to my experience, in wild lions. In some of them, however, the eyes were brownish and sleepy-looking.

When walking, wild lions hold the head rather low, lower than the line of the back, and although, when suddenly encountered, they will raise it for a moment to take a look at the intruder, they will soon lower it again and either trot away with a low growl or else stand watching. A wild lion looks his best and his worst, intensely savage but not at all majestic, when standing at bay. I have the pictures of four male lions, that I had chased on horseback and brought to bay, very vividly impressed on my memory. One was wounded, though only slightly, the other three as yet untouched. They all stood fairly facing me, their heads held well down below their mane-crowned shoulders, their fierce yellow eyes gleaming, and their ears laid flat, like the ears of an angry cat or leopard. All the time they stood at bay they kept up a constant succession of loud, rumbling growls and flicked their tails continually from side to side, throwing them suddenly into the air before charging with louder, hoarser growls.

In one respect the behaviour of these four angry lions was quite different from that of an angry cat or leopard, or even tiger. There was no suspicion of snarling about them. Their mouths were held slightly open, but instead of the upper lip being drawn up so as to expose the upper canine teeth, it was drawn down so as to completely cover them. They stood thus with their mouths held slightly open, growling savagely and twitching their tails from side to side, until two of them charged before I fired at them, and the other two I fired at and killed before they could make up their minds to charge. Now this abstention from all suspicion of snarling which I remember so well in the case of four different lions when driven to bay, and the fact that I do not carry in my mind the picture of any lion snarling that I have ever shot, makes me wonder whether it is correct to depict an angry lion as snarling like an angry cat or leopard. This is a small matter, no doubt, but one which I think it is worth while inquiring into, as if an angry lion really does not snarl, it differs in this respect from all other members of the cat tribe.

I once galloped almost on to a lion lying flat on the ground in grass only about a foot in height before I saw it. When I at last made it out, I was directly in front of, and probably less than twenty yards away from it. As I pulled my horse in, this lion had its head pressed down on its outstretched paws and its eyes were fixed upon me. Had I ridden by, it would certainly never have moved until I had got out of sight. As I raised my rifle and looked down the barrel to align the sights upon its head, I saw the black tuft of hair at the end of its tail flicked lightly from side to side, and the fore-paws, that had been stretched out straight beyond its nose, drawn slowly under its breast, without its head or body being perceptibly raised. I knew the lion was on the very point of charging, but my horse kept breathing hard and I could not get my sight steadily fixed below its eyes. Then, just as I saw the crouching beast's hind-quarters quivering, or rather moving gently from side to side, I fired, and luckily my bullet struck it just between the eyes, and crashing into its brain, killed it instantly, so that it never moved, but still lay crouching on the ground, struck dead at the very last moment before starting on its charge. Since that time I have on several occasions watched a cat when stalking a bird go through every movement made by that lion—the same apparently involuntary twitching of just the end of the tail, the same drawing-in of the fore-paws beneath the chest, and then the wavy movement of the loins just before the final rush. As lions are very nocturnal in their habits and usually hunt by night, it is, of course, very unusual to see them approach and kill their prey, but from the above related experience I imagine that every movement made by a lion in approaching and finally making a rush upon an antelope or zebra is exactly represented in miniature by a cat stalking a bird or rabbit. It is as well to remember that if a lion, after standing for a short time growling at you and whisking its tail backwards and forwards round its hind-legs, suddenly stiffens it and throws it straight into the air at right angles to the line of its back two or three times, it is a danger-signal and means charging. A lion may often charge without throwing its tail straight up, but I believe that it will never throw its tail up without charging.

The African lion appears to be more gregarious than any other of the Felidae, and the male is certainly addicted to polygamy. Often a lion or a lioness may live and hunt for a time by itself, and very old animals are probably always solitary, as an old lion would be driven away from the females by younger males, and an old female would probably be badly treated by younger animals of both sexes. Sometimes two or even three males will hunt together for a time. More often a male lion may be met with accompanied by from one to four females, some of which latter may be followed by cubs of different ages and sizes. A family party consisting of one old male lion, three or four adult females, and several cubs, some of which may stand almost as high at the shoulder as their mothers, would constitute what the old Boer hunters would have called "en trop leeuws" (a troop of lions). In parts of Africa where game is, or was, very abundant, there are many authentic records of over twenty lions having been seen together. In his article on "The Lion," published in the Badminton Library Series, Mr. F. J. Jackson, C.B., has noted the fact that on August 7, 1890, he and Dr. Mackinnon came across a troop of twenty-three lions near Machakos in East Africa. This troop consisted of three male lions with splendid dark manes, five or six lionesses, and the rest cubs. I have come to the conclusion that such large assemblages of lions as this, in which there are several full-grown males, are, in all probability, only of a very temporary nature, the chance meeting and fraternisation of several families which, as a rule, live and hunt apart; since I believe that the passions of love and jealousy would not allow two or more males to live permanently in the company of lionesses without fighting. When a troop of lions is met with, in which, besides a full-grown male and some females and small cubs, there are also one or two good-sized young males with small manes, I believe that they are the offspring of the old male and one or other of the adult females, and that they have lived and hunted with the troop since cubhood. Such young males are probably not driven away to hunt by themselves until they commence to aspire to the affections of one of the females of the party. In 1879 I encountered two pairs of male lions hunting in company in the Mababi country to the north of Lake N'gami. I shot the first pair, and should certainly have killed both the others had I only had a rifle and a few cartridges with me when I first saw them, as they were right out on an open plain from which the grass had been burnt, far away from the nearest bush, and I was riding the best hunting horse I ever possessed. The two lions which I shot were large and heavy, apparently just in their prime, and the other pair also appeared to be full-grown animals. Now the Masarwa Bushmen living near the Mababi plain—and these wild people are extraordinarily acute observers—declared that they knew both these pairs of lions well, and said that each pair were the cubs of one mother, and had been hunting together since cubhood. Curiously enough, in the case of both these pairs of lions the two animals living and hunting together differed from one another very much. In each case one was of a very dark colour all over, with a dark mane, whilst the body of the other was of a pale yellow, and it had scarcely any mane at all. A few days after encountering the second pair of lions, a friend and myself came upon two lionesses on the same open plain, both of which we shot. One of these lionesses was on the point of giving birth to three cubs, which we cut out of her womb. Two of these cubs were males, and they differed very much one from another in colour even before birth. One was very dark indeed, owing to the blackish tint of the tips of the hairs of its little fluffy coat. The other was of a reddish yellow. The fur of the female cub was also of a much lighter colour than in the dark male. Now I cannot but adhere to the opinion which I wrote down in my diary at the time, that these two male lion cubs would, had they lived, have grown up into animals differing very much in appearance one from the other. The dark cub would have become a dark-skinned, dark-maned lion, the lighter coloured one a yellow lion with probably very little mane.

Commenting upon such a case as the above, Mr. R. Lydekker, in one of his recently published zoological essays, says that when light- and dark-maned cubs are met with in the same litter it is due to crossing between lions of different races. Mr. Lydekker has also stated that "with regard to the lion, it has now been ascertained that the black-maned and tawny-maned specimens belong, in most cases at any rate, to distinct local races."

The objection to this theory is that you cannot classify all African lions under two heads, the black-maned and the tawny-maned. Dealing with this subject in 1881, and referring only to the skins of lions I had seen which had been killed in the country between the Limpopo and the Zambesi, I wrote as follows: "I cannot see that there is any reason for supposing that more than one species (of lion) exists, and as out of fifty lion skins scarcely two will be found exactly alike in the colour and length of the mane, I think it would be as reasonable to suppose that there are twenty species as two. The fact is, that between the animal with hardly a vestige of mane and the far handsomer but much less common beast with a long flowing black mane every possible intermediate variety may be found." Since that time I have seen a great many more skins of lions shot in the country to the south of the Zambesi, as well as a number from limited areas of country in East Africa and in Somaliland, and it appears to me that the lions of these two latter very limited areas show exactly the same variations as regards colour and profuseness of mane as their congeners in the more southerly parts of the continent.

I have seen the skins of many lions and lionesses in South Africa, which seemed to be those of full-sized animals though they may have been young in years, showing very well-defined red-brown spots on the legs, flanks, and belly. The old Boer hunters, indeed, had a name for such lions, "bont pod leeuws" (spotted-footed lions), which some of them maintained belonged to a distinct species. I once, however, showed the skins of five lions, which I had recently shot in Mashunaland, to a well-known Boer hunter. One was that of a large male with a fine dark mane. This he declared to be the skin of a "swart voer-leif leeuw" (lion with the front part of the body black); whilst the skin of a lioness which showed a good many spots on the legs and belly, he declared to be that of a "bont pod leeuw, de kwai sort" (spotted-footed lion, the vicious kind). As, however, these two animals were consorting together when I shot them, I do not believe that they belonged to different species or even races. I am inclined to think that lions showing spots on the legs and belly, when adult but still not old, might very likely lose them in later life.

In regard to wild lions, it may be said, as a general proposition, that the mane usually grows round the neck and on the chest only, with a prolongation from the back of the neck to behind the shoulder-blades. Sometimes large full-grown male lions will be practically maneless. Occasionally specimens will be met with in which the entire shoulders as well as the neck will be covered with mane. When writing of lions in 1881, I stated that I had never seen the skin of a wild lion in which the whole belly was covered with long hair, as is so often the case with lions in captivity in this country, though I had seen full-maned wild lions with large tufts of long dark hair on the elbows and in the flanks. A few years later, however, Lo Bengula, the last chief of the Matabele, gave me the skin of a lion which had been killed near the upper course of the Umzingwani river, not far from Bulawayo, with a very fine mane. In this specimen the tufts of hair in the flanks were very profuse, almost meeting across the belly, and there were a few long hairs all over the under parts of the skin. There is also, I think, good evidence to show that in the more southerly portions of South Africa lions not infrequently developed a growth of long hair all over their bellies; for not only are all the lions figured by Captain (afterwards Sir Cornwallis) Harris so adorned, but there is now in the Junior United Service Club in London a mounted specimen of a South African lion with not only an extraordinary wealth of mane covering the whole of the fore-part of the body, but also with a thick growth of long hair all over its belly. This lion is said to have been killed near the Orange river about 1830, probably, I should think, on the bontebok flats, near Colesberg, in the Cape Colony, though possibly on the plains to the north of the river. Now, personally I believe that cold has more to do with the development of a lion's mane than anything else. The winter cold of the high plateaus of the Cape Colony, the Orange Colony, and the Southern Transvaal is much more severe than in any part of Africa where lions exist to-day, and Harris's drawings and the mounted specimen of the lion I have above referred to, which was killed near the Orange river long ago, show that wild lions sometimes attained very profuse manes and had their bellies covered with long hair in that part of Africa. To-day, lions with really fine manes are never found except in countries where the nights are cold during the winter months, such as the Athi plains, the Uas N'gishu plateau, the high downs of Matabeleland and Mashunaland, and the Haud of Somaliland, as well as other elevated regions. In the Pungwe river district some few lions attain fairly good, but never, I believe, extraordinarily profuse manes. Only a certain proportion of the lions found on high and cold plateaus have, however, fine long dark manes. Many have very poor manes, but it seems to me impossible that there can be more than one species of lion in so confined an area. In the hotter parts of Africa, lying below the level of the more elevated plateaus, I think I am correct in saying that lions never get fine manes, and the hotter the climate, the poorer on the average the manes will be. The fact that the high, cold plateaus are always open grasslands free from thorn-bush, whilst the lower parts of the country are usually covered with scrubby bush and thorny thickets, has led many people to think that lions have poor manes in bush-covered countries because the thorns tear out the hair; but I think that this is quite a mistaken idea, for in the western part of Matabeleland, in the neighbourhood of the Ramokwebani and Tati rivers, where the winter nights are very cold, although the whole country is covered with forest, much of it dense thorn-bush, the lions used sometimes to grow very fine long manes. Personally, therefore, I am convinced that climate is the main factor in the production of a lion's mane, and possibly very high feeding may help to produce certain exceptionally fine animals. As the high plateaus of Southern and Eastern Africa have, before the advent of Europeans, always teemed with great multitudes of zebras and antelopes, and in some cases buffaloes as well, the lions of the high and cold plateaus have most certainly always been well fed. The lions living in the Pungwe river district too must, before the advent of Europeans, have been exceptionally well fed.

It has always seemed to me that in Africa and India, where, although the nights may be cold, the sun is always hot, a heavy mane must be more or less of a nuisance and encumbrance to a lion; and I believe that such a wonderful growth of hair must be a reversion to an ancestral adornment first evolved in a cold climate.

The fossil remains of the so-called cave lion (Felis spelaea), which have been discovered in great abundance in the cave deposits of Pleistocene times in Western Europe, are said by Professor Boyd Dawkins to present absolutely no osteological or dental character by which they can be distinguished from those of existing lions, and I think that we are therefore justified in believing that the lion was first evolved in a cold climate, and that in the course of ages it gradually spread south and east, following the migrations of the game on which it preyed. It probably entered Africa before that continent was separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea, at the same time as the ancestors of the giraffes, antelopes, buffaloes, elephants, and rhinoceroses of to-day, and accompanied them through Eastern Africa right down to Cape Agulhas. Some lions remained in Europe long after the separation of Africa from that continent, and even in the time of Herodotus these animals appear to have been still common throughout South-Eastern Europe.

As the ancient cave lions which roamed the woods and plains of Western Europe co-existed with bears, mammoths, reindeer, elk, wild cattle, and other denizens of a cold country, there can be little doubt that their coats were thick and furry in both sexes, whilst a heavy mane would have been an adornment to the males without being an encumbrance.

That the flowing mane and shaggy hair on the belly of the male lion were first evolved in a cold climate is, I think, proved by the undoubted fact that there is an inherited tendency in all lions to grow a mane, which is crippled and dwarfed by a hot climate but encouraged by exposure to cold. Quite recently there was a fine lion in the Zoological Society's Gardens at Regent's Park which was presented by Messrs. Grogan and Sharpe. This animal was caught near the Pungwe river, in South-East Africa, and brought to England by these gentlemen when quite a small cub. When full-grown it developed a very much finer mane than I believe has ever been seen in a wild lion that has come to maturity in the part of Africa from which it was brought. Similarly, some thirty years ago there was a very fine lion in the Society's Gardens which was brought by Colonel Knox from the Soudan. Colonel Knox took me to the Gardens to see this animal, and pointed out to me the fact that it had developed a far finer mane (extending much farther back over the shoulders and under the belly) than any man had ever seen in a wild lion in the country from which it came. Lion cubs brought to this country from India also grow fine manes, though I do not think that there is any record of a lion ever having been shot in India with anything more than a fairly good mane. The fact that lion cubs captured in any part of Africa or Asia, and brought up in the comparatively cool and damp climate of Western Europe, always—or nearly always—grow fine manes, which usually cover the whole shoulders and often extend all over the under-surface of the body, and the further fact that in the hotter parts of Africa lions always have very scanty manes, but on the high, cold plateaus often develop good, and occasionally very luxuriant manes, appears to me to show that a heavily maned lion is a reversion to an ancient ancestral type, first evolved in Pleistocene times in a cold and inclement climate.