406 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XIX 



in a house in the village, carrying off two. This bear was especially 

 addicted to sheep stealing, and his visits were marked by a heap of 

 dead and dying found in the morning, killed, apparently, out of mere 

 wantonness. 



Mr. Selous has never seen any evidence of a lion killing its prey 

 by striking it a heavy blow with one of its paws : my experience of 

 tigers coincides with this ; but I recollect seeing a thick copper dish, 

 which a beater was earring on his back, battered by a tiger's paw, 

 and with five claw-holes through it. The tiger appears to have seized 

 or struck at the man in passing, but except for bruises the beater was 

 uninjured. ^m 



A lion appears to charge in much the same way as a tiger or S 

 leopard, not in a series of leaps, as is popularly imagined, but coming 

 along close to the ground like a great dog. Mr. Selous mentions 

 that most of the men he has seen mauled by lions were bitten, and 

 untouched by the claws. My experience in the main coincides with 

 this ; if there are claw wounds, they generally appear to be slight. 

 A leopard which mauled me, after seizing my arm and bearing me to 

 the ground, placed one paw on the calf of the leg, and seized the 

 thigh in its jaws ; the claw scratches on the calf were comparatively 

 slight. The actual bite, as the African hunter notes, is practically 

 painless. Mr. Selous mentions the eyes of wounded lions appearing 

 to be ablaze ; I have observed the same thing in the case of both 

 tigers and leopards. He notes that troops of over twenty lions have 

 frequently beeii seen. As already remarked, these animals differ 

 from tigers in this respect. I have heard of a troop of six panthers 

 being seen walking across a glade in the jungle in Berar. 



It is surely time to protest against the tendency of naturalists to 

 divide species into numerous local races or sub-species, each with an 

 extra specific name, and frequently on the slenderest grounds. Thus 

 in a recent natural history we find the lion divided into seven races, 

 each with three latin names, the distinctions between them being based 

 generally on colour and the extent of the mane. Such distinctions 

 nmst be somewhat fallacious, and in view of what Mr. Selous says it is 

 doubtful wliether anv naturalist can refer an assortment of lion skins, 

 collected pi'omiscuously, to their so-called " local races." Lions 

 varying in colour, with black manes and yellow manes, of various deve- 

 lopment, and with no manes at all are found in one and the same dis- j 



