The Lion. 3 



roaring, and fatiguing himself by vainly attempting to 

 escape ; till, at last, he becomes exhausted, and so tame 

 as to permit his captors to put ropes round him, and 

 drag him out. He is then put into a cage, and removed 

 in a kind of waggon, wherever his captors may wish to 

 take him. 



The generosity of the Lion has been much extolled ; 

 but the tales related of it appear to have had no other 

 foundation than the fact, that, like many other beasts, 

 when gorged with food he will not attack a man. A 

 great amount of courage has also been so generally 

 ascribed to him that the expression " as brave as a 

 Lion," has become proverbial, and he has been regarded 

 as a sort of symbol of that quality. For this respectable 

 character, the Lion is no doubt mainly indebted to his 

 possession of a mane, and to the boldness of appearance 

 produced by his carrying his head elevated ; for in all 

 other respects he is a genuine cat, with neither more 

 nor less courage than belongs to the cats in general. As 

 the Lion belongs to the cat tribe, his eyes are incapable 

 of bearing a strong light; it is therefore generally in 

 the night that he prowls about for prey, and when the 

 sun shines in his face, he becomes confused and almost 

 blinded. Lion hunters are aware of this fact. In the 

 day-time they always consider themselves safe, so long 

 as they have the sun on their backs. In the night, 

 a fire has nearly the same effect; and travellers in 

 Africa and the deserts of Arabia can generally protect 

 themselves from Lions and Tigers by making a large 

 fire near their sleeping-place. The strength of the 

 African species is so great that he has been known to 

 carry away a young heifer, and leap a ditch with it in 

 his mouth. The power that man may acquire over this 

 animal has been often shown in the exhibitions of Van 

 Amburgh, Carter, and others ; but the attachment which 

 Lions sometimes form for their keepers, was never more 

 strongly exemplified than in the following anecdote. 



M. Felix, the keeper of the animals in Paris, some 

 years ago, brought two Lions, a male and female, to the 

 national menagerie. About the beginning of the follow- 

 ing June he was taken ill, and could no longer attend 



