THE BIG GAME OF AFRICA 



ference in this respect. Lionesses have been found weigh- 

 ing from three hundred pounds to four hundred and 

 twenty-five pounds, and full-grown males tip the scales at 

 four hundred and fifty pounds and more, one of the larg- 

 est on record having weighed five hundred and eighty- 

 three pounds. This was an unusually large male lion, in 

 the prime of life, killed in the Orange Free State, in 

 1865, in a locality where game was very abundant. That 

 specimen, therefore, was in splendid condition. 



The lion inhabits at present not only the greater part 

 of Africa, from the Cape Colony in the south to Abyssinia 

 and the northern parts of the Sahara Desert in the north, 

 but it is also found in many places in southwestern Asia, 

 where it still occurs in certain parts of Mesopotamia and 

 Arabia, as well as in northwestern India. It is now more 

 and more rarely seen in the latter locality, and it is only 

 a question of a few years when the beautiful beast will 

 have been completely exterminated within the limits of 

 India. In ages past, and even within historic times, the 

 lion was found in southeastern Europe, in such countries 

 as Roumania and Greece, and bones and skulls of pre- 

 historic lions, of unquestionably the same species, have 

 been found as far north as Germany, the British Isles, and 

 France. 



In South Africa lions are now very scarce in the dis- 

 tricts south of the Orange River, where the white man 

 with his modern firearms has almost exterminated the big 

 cat. In other parts of Africa, however, it is almost ab- 

 solutely certain that where large herds of game are still 

 to be found, there the lion also abounds. On the other 

 hand, in places where there is a scarcity of game, one 



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