156 BULLETIN 99, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



east side, 2 (Abbott); Mount Lololokwi, 1 (Heller); Mtheka Hill, 

 near Ulu, 1 (Johnston); Nairobi, 6 (McMillan, White); Northern 

 Guaso Nyiro River, 1 (K. Roosevelt); Ulu, 7 (Rainey); Ulukenia 

 Hills, 1 (Rainey); Useri River, 15 miles east of Kilimanjaro, 1 (Ab- 

 bott); Wami Hill, Kapiti Plains, 3 (T. Roosevelt). 



Included in this series are 27 adult specimens, the skulls of which 

 show full matm-ity. Other almost fully grown animals are, as shown 

 by the sutures of the skulls, not fully matured. There is an excel- 

 lent series of young of all ages, from tiny kittens to those nearly grown. 



The Massai or East African lion is a distinctly light-colored, 

 short-haired race. The males are usually decidedly grayish or light 

 buff in color and are easily distinguished by this character from the 

 darker, more ochraceous, and longer-haired Uganda lion, which ranges 

 southeast to the Loita Plains and Southern Guaso Nyiro River. 

 The females are darker and richer colored than the males and differ 

 from females of the Uganda race only by a slight average paler col- 

 oration. The younger animals differ from the immature specimens 

 of nyanzx in the same slight degree. I can find no constant and reli- 

 able characters by which the skulls of the two races may be distin- 

 guished. In reporting on a collection of mammals from British 

 East Africa in 1910,^ I referred lions from Nairobi to Fells leo sahaJci- 

 ensis Lonnberg, described from Mount Kilimanjaro. With such a 

 large series of skins and skulls as the museum now possesses for 

 study and comparison, I am unable to recognize this race, which was 

 founded on individual characteristics of female specimens. 



The range of Felis leo massaica as mapped by Roosevelt and Hel- 

 ler 2 includes all of German and British East Africa westward to the 

 shores of Victoria Nyanza; but the excellent series of specimens now 

 preserved in the United States National Museum proves that the 

 lions of the Southern Guaso Nyiro and Sotik are separable from the 

 Nairobi, Kapiti Plains, and Kilimanjaro animals, and are better 

 placed with the form described by Heller from the northern shore 

 of Victoria Nyanza, Fells le:> nijamx. I can not distinguish skins and 

 skulls from the region north of Mount Kenia from specimens killed 

 on the Kapiti Plains and in other southern localities. Lonnberg' 

 has referred a specimen from the Northern Guaso Nyiro to the Soma- 

 liland race, but our somewhat more plentiful material does not jus- 

 tify such a conclusion. A single skin from the Guas Ngishu Plateau 

 is clearly of the East African rather than of the Uganda form. 



Wnile on the whole there is remarkable uniformity in skulls of this 

 lion, there are a few cases of considerable individual variation in size 

 of fully adult examples, as shown in the accompanying tables of 



1 Smithsonian Misc. (oil., vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 1-12. March 31, 1910. 



2 Life-Uistoiies of Africiin Oame Animals, vol. 1, p. 227. 1914. 

 •■! Kungl. Svcnska Vet. Handl., ^ ol. 48, No. 5, p. 74. 1912. 



