EAST AFRICAN MAMMALS IN NATIONAL MUSEUM. 165 



FELIS LEO ROOSEVELTI Heller. 



Plate 43. 



1913. Felts leo loosevelti Heller, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 61, No. 19, p. 2. 



November 8. ("Highlands of Abyssinia near Addis Ababa;" type in 

 U. S. Nat. Mus.) 



1914. Felis leo roosevelti Roosevelt and Heller, Life-Hist. Afr. Game Anim., 



vol. 1, map, p. 227. 

 1917. Felis leo ;-oose7eto' Hollister, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 53, pp. 186, 188, 

 192, June 1. 



Specimens. — Four, from localities as follows: 



Sudan: Omdurman, 1 (Wingate). 



Abyssinia: "Abyssinia," 2 (Menelik, Nat. Zoo. Park) : Harrar, 1 

 (Nat. Zoo. Park). 



AU of these four specimens are animals which have died in the 

 Zoological Park, and all show the uimiistakable characteristics of 

 bone and color usual to lions reared in captivity. They are therefore 

 valueless for systematic work. 



The status of this subspecies is greatly in doubt. The type-speci- 

 men was presented by King Menelik of Abyssinia to President Roose- 

 velt in 1904 and was deposited in the National Zoological Park in 

 March of that year. It died November 14, 1906. In describing the 

 race, HeUer assumed that this animal was captured near Addis Ababa 

 and that it was fully grown when taken by the Abyssinians. Both 

 (^f these assmnptions are apparently groundless, as the skuU shows 

 unquestionably that the lion lived his life in captivity from early 

 adolescence. The locality "Addis Ababa" is not entered in the 

 musemn records, and there is every chance that the lion was brought 

 to the Emperor as a kitten by some of his subjects living in some far- 

 distant corner of Abyssinia. The skull almost exactly agrees with 

 the old male sloills of the McMillan lions from Nairobi, British East 

 Africa, which died in the National Zoological Park, and can not be 

 separated subspecifically from them. It differs from all the wild- 

 killed skulls of Fells leo massaica exactly as these McMillan skulls 

 differ from wild-kiUod lion skulls from the vicinity of Nairobi. ^ The 

 skin is dark and richly colored and has a splendid mane, but, as 

 stated before, these are characteristics of zoological park lions. All 

 the characters used in separating the race, then, are those common 

 to specimens of massaica reared in captivity, and it might be argued 

 that since tiie type specimen of roosevelti might weU have originally 

 been captured within the habitat of massaica the name should be 

 placed in the s3nion\Tny of the latter form. There are few specunens 

 of wild-killed Abyssmian lions in collections, and great effort should 

 be made to obtam such material before it is too late. 



1 See Hollister, Some Eflects of Environment and Habit on Captive Lions, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 

 53, pp. 177-193. June 1, 1917. 



