6o AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



enjoyment of their full strength and vigour do from 

 time to time occur — the celebrated Tsavo man-eaters 

 which played such havoc amongst the construction 

 camps on the Uganda Railway were reported to 

 have been far from old — yet it cannot be denied 

 that in the vast majority of cases a lion only takes 

 to killing human beings in its declining years, and 

 when its strength is failing. 



On this subject, Dr. Livingstone wrote many 

 years ago : " A man-eater is invariably an old lion, 

 and when he overcomes his fear of man so far as 

 to come to villages for goats, the people remark, 

 ' His teeth are worn, he will soon kill men.' They 

 at once acknowledge the necessity of instant action 

 and turn out to kill him." 



Speaking generally, nothing truer could have 

 been written than these sentences ; but there are 

 exceptions to every rule, and when a strong and 

 vigorous lion does take to preying upon human 

 beings, it is naturally not so easy to hunt down 

 and destroy as would be an old and weakly beast, 

 whose "teeth are worn." 



An adult male lion is probably possessed of greater 

 strength in proportion to its size and weight than 

 any other African animal. It will kill with astonish- 

 ing ease and dexterity a full-grown buffalo cow or 

 the heaviest bullock, and probably sometimes a 

 buffalo bull or a giraffe. I never remember, how- 

 ever, to have seen the carcase of an old buffalo bull 

 that had palpably been killed by a single lion, whilst 

 I have shot several buffalo bulls that had escaped 

 from lions after receiving very severe wounds from 

 their teeth and claws. I once had a very good 

 opportunity of noting the manner in which a big 

 male lion killed a heavy ox, which would certainly 

 have scaled more than twice its own weight. This 

 ox was killed during the night, but as the lion was 

 immediately driven from the carcase, it had no time 



