THE LION 179 



tim, as soon as he has caught it, out of reach of vengeance, 

 although he may only go for a distance of a few hundred 

 yards, being confident in the shelter yielded by a dark night. 

 This is entirely unlike the lion's conduct with other prey; if 

 a zebra or hartebeest is killed, the lion stays on the spot with 

 his victim, and may eat it where it has fallen or drag it a 

 few yards to a more convenient spot. Save in very wild 

 places the lion leaves its prey at or before dawn, and may 

 then travel some miles to its resting-place ; it will probably 

 come back the second night, unless it has been molested or 

 has had its suspicions aroused. Lions feast on any dead 

 animal they find, from an elephant to a dikdik, and even 

 eat carrion. When they kill game of any size they first 

 neatly disembowel the body, usually burying the entrails, 

 and then either eat the heart, lungs, and brisket, or else 

 begin straightway at the hind quarters. Sometimes, how- 

 ever, they do not disembowel the prey. They feed greedily, 

 bolting strips of the hairy hide with their meat, but in one 

 case I heard from an eye-witness of a lion's striking a dead 

 zebra's body with its spread paws, and clawing off big 

 patches of hide before beginning its feast. 



Except man, the lion has few or no regular enemies in 

 his prime. He will get out of the way of either an elephant 

 or rhinoceros, and a herd of cow elephants with calves will 

 charge any lion they find lurking in their neighborhood, and 

 would undoubtedly kill it if it could not get into cover. 

 Very probably a buffalo herd might, under exceptional cir- 

 cumstances, behave in the same way. Hyenas hang around 

 lions to get the ofTal of any beasts the latter slay; and it is 

 no uncommon thing to find the body of a hyena which has 

 itself been slain by a lion when it has incautiously or over- 



