80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to their last foot-hold in Europe by the hunter and the husbandman. 

 The exact date of the killing of the last lion is uncertain ; but from 

 the melancholy passage of Dio Chrysostom Rhetor (Oratio 21) "the 

 honorable have vanished away in the course of time, as they say 

 the lions have done which formerly dwelt in Europe " it must have 

 happened before the close of the first century after Christ. 



Sir G. C. Lewis, to whose papers in " Notes and Queries " we are 

 indebted for many references used in this essay, points out that the 

 mythology of Italy contains no allusion to the lion, while that of 

 Greece extends the range of the lion into Peloponnese, and to the 

 west of the Achelous, or, in other words, proves that the lion had a 

 wider range in Southern Europe before the time of Herodotus than it 

 had afterward. According to iElian, it had retired from Peloponnese 

 before the time of Homer. 



The memory of the lion was preserved in its ancient haunts long 

 after it had become extinct. The scene of one of the prettiest stories 

 told by JElian * is laid in Mount Pangseum, which, from its mention 

 by Xenophon, must have been a famous haunt of lions : 



Eudemus tells the tale that in PangflBum in Thrace a bear attacked the lair 

 of a lion, while it was unguarded, and killed the cubs that were too small and 

 too weak to defend themselves. And when the father and the mother came 

 home from hunting somewhere, and saw their children lying dead, they were 

 much aggrieved, and attacked the bear ; but she was afraid, and climbed up into 

 a tree as fast as she could, and settled herself down, trying to avoid the attack. 

 Now, when they saw that they could not avenge themselves on her, the lioness 

 did not cease to watch the tree, but sat down in ambush at the foot, eying the 

 bear, that was covered with blood. But the lion, as it were, without purpose 

 and distraught with grief, after the manner of a man, rushed off to the mount- 

 ains, and chanced to light on a wood-cutter, who, in terror, let fall his axe ; but 

 the lion fawned upon him, and reaching up saluted him as well as he could, and 

 licked his face with his tongue. And the man took courage. Then the lion en- 

 circled him with his tail, and led him, and did not suffer him to leave his axe 

 behind, but pointed with his foot for it to be taken up. And when the man did 

 not understand he took it up in his mouth and reached it to him. Then he fol- 

 lowed while the lion led him to his den. And when the lioness saw him, she 

 came and made signs, looking at the pitiable spectacle, and then up at the bear. 

 Then the man perceived and understood that the lion had suffered cruel wrong 

 from the bear, and cut down the tree with might and main. And the tree fell, 

 and the lions tore the bear in pieces ; but the man the lion led back again, safe 

 and sound, to the place where he lighted on him, and returned him to the very 

 tree he had been cutting. 



With this simple story, told probably by the wood-cutters of Pan- 

 goeum to their children and handed down from generation to gen- 

 eration, we may conclude the history of the lion in Europe. In the 

 remote Pleistocene age the lion ranged over nearly the whole of Eu- 

 rope, south of a line passing through Yorkshire and the Baltic, over 



* " De Natura Animalium," iii, 21. 



