PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vou 63. 



muscles, naturally less developed in the animal reared in captivity. 

 The digastric muscle, of quite another function, but powerfully 

 developed in the cat, and having its origin on the paroccipital process 

 and inward, bordering the posterior margin of the auditory bullae, 

 is no doubt somewhat responsible for the development of shape in 

 this part of the skull as well. After a preliminary movement of th" 

 hyoid muscles, it is the chief agent for depressing the jaw. The 

 cephalo-humeral and other muscles and the ligamentum nuchae attach 

 to the base of the skull but, in this problem, are of little importance. 



The mastoid breadth in a wild-killed adult male lion from Nairobi 

 (No. 155443) is 135 millimeters; in a McMillan lion of the same age 

 (No. 199707) it is 152. 



The lambdoidal ridge and occipital bones are broader in the Mc- 

 Millan skulls than in any skulls of wild lions. Here again the 

 splenius and complexus muscles, through nondevelopment, have 

 failed to influence the bone as in a normal wild lion w^hose life is 

 one of tearing and shaking of strong prey. 



The development of powerful neck muscles evidently begins in the 

 wild lion at an early age. Roosevelt and Heller write of the yomig 

 lion : ^ 



Wlien the cubs are three months or so old, they habitually travel with the 

 mother; then, instead of eating her fill at a kill and afterward returning to 

 the cubs, the latter run up to the kill and feed at it with their mother. We 

 found flesh and hair in the stomachs of two cubs; for they begin to eat flesh 

 long before they stop suckling. While still very young they try, in clumsy 

 fashion, to kill birds and small animals. By the time they are four or five 

 months old they sometimes endeavor to assist the mother when she has pulled 

 down some game which is not formidable, but has not killed it outright before 

 they come up; and soon afterward they begin to try regularly to help her in 

 killing, and they speedily begin to help her in hunting and to attempt to hunt 

 for themselves. Evidently in their first attempts they claw and bite their prey 

 everywhere; for we found carcasses of zebra and hartebeest thus killed by 

 family parties which were scarred all over. 



Remarks on Other Park-Reared Caknr'ores. 



Park lions in the museum collection recorded as from Abyssinia, 

 Sudan, and Somaliland, and others without definite history, agree 

 in all essential details with the McMillan animals. The Menelik 

 lion, which has been made the type-specimen of a new^ subspecies,' 

 is virtually inseparable by any character, so far as the skull is con- 

 cerned, from the McMillan lions. The differentiating characters as 

 given in the description are exactly those separating park-reared 

 from wild-killed specimens of the East African massaica; the speci- 

 men was compared with wild examples. This animal was presented 



1 Life-Histories of African Game Animals, vol. 1, 1014, pp. 105, IGG. 

 2Fe?is Ico roosevclU Heller, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 61, No. 19, p. 2. November 

 8, 1913. 



