NOTES ON THE LION (continued)
Depredations of lions in Mashunaland—Sad death of Mr. Teale—Great slaughter of pigs by a lioness—Mode of entering a cattle kraal—Method of killing prey—Sharpness of lion's claws—Mode of seizing a horse in motion—Lion chasing koodoos—Lions lying in wait for oxen—How a lion charges—Black Jantje's story—Numbing effect of lion's bite—Cruelty in nature—Appearance of wild lions—Colour of eyes—Lions at bay—A crouching lion—A lucky shot—The cat a lion in miniature—A danger signal—Social habits of lions—Troops of lions—Lions on the Mababi plain—Difference between cubs of one litter—Individual differences in lions—Great variation in the development of the mane—Lion probably first evolved in a cold climate—Still found in Europe in the time of Herodotus—Effect of cold on growth of lion's mane.
When a previously uninhabited piece of country is invaded and settled up by a tribe of natives or by Europeans, lions are always very troublesome, as they look upon all the newly introduced domestic animals as some new species of game specially brought into the country for their benefit.
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.
PLATE SHOWING DIFFERENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MANE IN LIONS INHABITING A COMPARATIVELY SMALL AREA OF COUNTRY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
The skins from which these figures have been drawn are all in the possession of the Author, and are all three those of fully adult animals.
Lion
No. 1.—Lion killed on the upper Hanyani river in Mashunaland in June 1880.
Lion
No. 2.—Lion killed on the Umzingwani river near Bulawayo in Matabeleland in September 1887.
Lion
No. 3.—Lion killed on the Botletlie river, near the Makari-kari Salt-pan, in May 1879.
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.
