Old Ephraim. 3i 



number of two or three hundred with the object of killing 

 (the lion) or driving it out of the country. The attack 

 took place at sunrise ; at mid-day five hundred cartridges 

 had been expended ; the Arabs carried off one of their 

 number dead and six wounded, and the lion remained 

 master of the field of battle." Now if three hundred men 

 could fire five hundred shots at a lion without hurting him, 

 it merely shows that they were wholly incapable of hurting 

 any thing, or else that M. Gerard was more expert with 

 the long-bow than with^the rifle. Gerard's whole book is 

 filled with equally preposterous nonsense ; yet a great 

 many people seriously accept this same book as trust- 

 worthy authority for the manners and ferocity of the 

 North African lion. It would be quite as sensible to 

 accept M. Jules Verne's stories as being valuable contri- 

 butions to science. A good deal of the lion's reputation 

 is built upon just such stuff. 



How the prowess of the grizzly compares with that 

 of the lion or tiger would be hard to say ; I have never 

 shot either of the latter myself, and my brother, who 

 has killed tigers in India, has never had a chance at a 

 grizzly. Any one of the big bears we killed on the 

 mountains would, I should think, have been able to make 

 short work of either a lion or a tiger ; for the grizzly 

 is greatly superior in bulk and muscular power to either 

 of the great cats, and its teeth are as large as theirs, while 

 its claws, though blunter, are much longer ; nevertheless, 

 I believe that a lion or a tiger would be fully as dangerous 

 to a hunter or other human being, on account of the 

 superior speed of its charge, the lightning-like rapidity of 



