CAPT. W. SMEE ON THE MANELESS LION OF GUZERAT. 167 
similar manner from a point on the shoulder on each side. In the adult male, whose 
shoulders and neck are covered with his copious mane, the direction of the hairs in this 
part can scarcely be traced with certainty: but in the female it is readily observable, 
though less strongly marked than in either the female or the male of the Guzerat Lion. 
The female of the African Lion has along the middle line of the back of her neck a 
vestige of mane, corresponding with that of the Lioness of Guzerat; and both the 
male and female have ridges of hair passing down the face, which seem, however, to 
be less constant and regular than those observed in the Lion of Guzerat. 
In the African Lion also the reversed direction of the hairs from behind forwards 
along the middle line of the back from the loins to near the shoulders, obtains equally 
as in the Lion of Guzerat. This latter character is, however, subject to variation; but 
whether from individual peculiarities or as indicative of the existence of different races, 
I am not in possession of sufficiently numerous facts to enable me to determine. In a 
skin, (preserved in the Museum of the East India Company and marked as having been 
obtained in India,) the reversed direction of the hair is limited to about one half of the 
usual extent, reaching forwards from the loins no farther than to near the middle of 
the back, where it is met by the prolonged termination of the ordinary series of back- 
wardly directed hairs'. In one other skin which I have had occasion to examine it 
does not exist at all, there being no reversed hairs whatever along any part of the 
middle line of the back: the animal from which it was obtained lived formerly in the 
Society’s Menagerie, but I have not been able to ascertain the locality from which it 
was originally procured. 
The sutures and various direction of the hairs which have just been described appear 
to be peculiar, in the genus Felis, to the Lion. They do not occur in any other species 
that I have examined, in all of which the hairs are directed regularly from the head 
towards the extremity of the body and tail and limbs. This is equally the case in the 
Leopard, destitute of the slightest appearance of mane, and in the Cheetah, the maned 
hunting Leopard. In the Cheetah, to which I have already compared in these respects 
the Lion of Guzerat, the mane of the back of the neck and that of the sides are occa- 
sioned solely by the elongation and crispation of the hairs of these parts, by means of 
which they are thrown off from the skin ; but the hairs are all directed backwards, and 
have in this respect nothing in common with the mane of the Lion. 
The quality of the fur in the Guzerat Lion corresponds generally with that of the 
African race, being short, firm, and adpressed. The under surface in both is furnished 
with hairs of greater length than the upper; but in the Guzerat Lion these are only so 
' This skin is also remarkable for the beautiful manner in which it displays the whorling of the hairs from 
the point on the shoulder; the mane is sparing, but the long hairs of which it is composed commence imme- 
diately from the whorl and radiate in all directions. 
