CHAP. v. LIONS. 255 



We now come to a part of the subject about which 

 alone volumes might be written. I refer to the man- 

 eaters. These, in Africa, are always lions, unless we 

 except crocodiles, for, despite what Mr. Layard has 

 written to the contrary, man-eating leopards do not exist, 

 except as exceptions which prove the rule, and no such 

 exceptional case has ever come within my knowledge, 

 either in my own experience, or from hearsay. Hyenas 

 have also, in a considerable number of cases, been known 

 to attack and kill infants, children, and now and then 

 to disfigure sleeping men, but I know of no well- 

 authenticated instance of any but the so-called king of 

 beasts making human beings his sole or chief source of 

 food. 



A great deal has been written about their craving for 

 such food after having once tasted human blood, but I am 

 inclined to class this idea with such fallacies as the power 

 of the human eye, etc. Lions have doubtless some slight 

 instinctive fear of human beings which urges them to let 

 them alone so long as they are able to provide themselves 

 with their usual food, and it is only in cases when they 

 have become unable from wounds or sickness to catch 

 game that they do otherwise. It is easy to be understood 

 that, having once discovered that the difficulty and danger 

 of thus earning their living is so very slight, they do not 

 relinquish the habit even after having recovered from the 

 illness which first induced it. 



In two cases I have been an accessory to the death of 

 well-known man-eaters, one of which had almost depopu- 

 lated a district, and had killed between thirty and forty 

 individuals ; while the other, though inhabiting a country 



