Lions.] 



MUSEUM OF ANIMATED NATURE. 



rior wilds ol' Africa, to some of the districts of Arabia 

 and Persia, to the country bordering the Euphrates, 

 and to some parts of India. We hesitate not to say 

 that thronsrhout tlie whole of this range the lions 

 are speciiieally identical, although different breeds 

 may be distinguished. Of the African lions the 

 Barbary breed is characterised by having a deep 

 yellowish-brown fur, and the mane of the male is 

 much developed (Fig. 17). 



The Senegal lion has the fur of a more yellow 

 tint, the mane is less full, and nearly wanting upon 

 the breast and insides of the fore-legs. 



The Cape lion presents two varieties, one yel- 

 lowish, the other brown, the mane of the latter 

 often deepening almost to black. Tlie dai'k lion is 

 said to be the most ferocious (Fig. 22). 



Of the Asiatic breeds the Bengal lion has the 

 mane inairniticently developed, the colour of the 

 fur of a dark yellowish-brown (Fig. 18). It attains 

 to a very large size. The Persian or Arabian lion 

 is said to be characterised by the pale Isabella 

 colour of the fur (Fig. 19). 



Within the last few years a maneless, or nearly 

 maneless, breed has been discovered in Giizerat. 

 Pliny alludes to a maneless lion which he regarded 

 as a hybrid occurring in Africa. 



It is to Captain Smee that we owe our knowledge 

 of the maneless lion. On his return- from Guzerat 

 to England he brought several skins of such lions 

 which he himself had shot : some of these he pre- 

 sented to the Zoological Society of London, and 

 communicated an interesting paper to the ' Zoologi- 

 cal Transactions' on the subject. The maneless 

 lion of Guzerat differs from its Bengal, Persian, and 

 African relatives, not only in the absence of a full 

 mane, but also in being rather lower on the limbs, 

 and in having a somewhat shorter tail, furnished at 

 its tip with a larger brush. The colour is pale ful- 

 vous. A male killed by Captain Smee measured, 

 mcluding the tail, eight feet nine and a half inches ; 

 his weight, exclusive of the internal viscera, was 

 thirty-five stone (fourteen pounds to the stone) ; his 

 height three feet six inches ; and the impression of 

 his paw on the sand measured six and a half inches 

 across (Fig. 20). 



It is along the banks of the Sorabermuttee, near 

 Ahmedabad, according to Captain Smee, that this 

 variety of the lion is found : it occurs also on the 

 Rhun, near Rhunpor, and near Puttun in Guzerat. 

 'During the hot months they inhabit the low brushy 

 wooded plains that skirt the Bhardar and Soniber- 

 muttee rivere from Ahmedabad to the borders of 

 Cutch, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts 

 of high jungle called Bheers, by the practice annu- 

 ally resorted to by the natives, of setting tire to the 

 grass in order to clear it and ensure a succession of 

 young shoots for the cattle upon the firet fall of the 

 rains.' So numerous are they that Captain Smee 

 killed in one district eleven in the couree of a month. 

 They make terrible havoc among the cattle, and 

 when attacked exhibit great boldness. The native 

 name for this lion is Ontiah Bang, or camel-tiger, 

 an appellation from the resemblance in colour to 

 the camel. 



The habits and manners of the lion have been 

 detailed by various travellers, and no one can doubt 

 its strength, its daring, and ferocity. Near the pre- 

 cincts of colonization in southern Africa and else- 

 where, where firearms are in use, it has learned 

 by experience their fatal effects, and gained a con- 

 sciousness that its powers avail but little against 

 such weapons of destruction. 



The king of the forest is a term misapplied to this 

 noble beast ; I'orests are not his haunts, but burning 

 desert plains and wide karroos covered only with 

 shnibby vegetation, or interspersed with tracts of 

 low brushwood. In India it frequents the jungles 

 and the luxuriant borders of rivei-s, among which it 

 makes its lair. 



During the day the lion usually slumbers in his 

 retreat : as nisht sets in he rouses from his lair and 

 begins \\n prowl. The nocturnal tempests of rain 

 and lightning, which in southern Africa are of 

 common occuiTence, are to him seasons of joy : his 

 voice mingles with the roar of the thunder, and 

 adds to the confusion and terror of the timid beasts 

 upon which he preys, and upon which he now ad- 

 vances with less caution and a bolder step. In 

 general, however, he waits in ambush or creeps 

 insidiou.sly towards his victim, which with a bound 

 and a roar he dashes to the earth. 



Of the strength of the lion we have most extra- 

 ordinary examples on record. To carry off a man — 

 and this has but too often happened — is a feat of 

 no difficulty to this powerful biute. Indeed when 

 we find that a Cape lion seized a heifer in his 

 mouth, and, though the l-egs dragged upon the 

 ground, carried her off with apparently the same 

 ease as a cat docs a rat. leaping a broad dyke with 

 her without the least difficulty— that another, and 

 a young one too, conveyed a horse about a mile 

 from the spot where he had killed it — that a third, 

 which had carried off a two-year-old heifer, was fol- 



lowed on the track for five hours by horsemen, who 

 observed that throughout the whole distance the 

 cai'case of the heifer had only once or twice touched 

 the ground, — we may conceive that a man would 

 be an insignificant burden. Such a powerful ani- 

 mal, however, we must not expect to see in the 

 confined dens of a menagerie : there their limbs 

 become cramped, their muscular system unde- 

 veloped, their bones often distorted, and their daring 

 and feiocity subdued. Such a shadow of a lion the 

 figure 26 exhibits, taken from an individual three 

 years old, which had been pent up in a wretched 

 cage. 



The Indian lion displays the same courage as its 

 African relative. Instead of retreating on the 

 hunters' approach, he stands his ground or rushes to 

 meet them open mouthed on the plain. Lions are 

 thus easily shot ; but if they be missed or only 

 slightly wounded, they prove very formidable. They 

 will spring on the heads of the largest elephants, 

 and have, it is asserted, often pulled them to the 

 earth, ridere and all. 



In the defence of her cubs the lioness is resolute 

 in the extreme, and is doubly savage during the 

 time they remain under her care. Her mate parti- 

 cipates in her feelings. The lioness goes with young 

 five months, and generally produces from two to 

 four young at a birth. They are born blind. For 

 several months their fur is obscurely striped or 

 brindled, the markings reminding us of those of the 

 tiger : these stripes branch off from a blackish line 

 running down the middle of the back. Their voice 

 is a cat-like mew. Gradually the uniform colour is 

 assumed, and at about the end of twelve months 

 the mane begins to appear : this increases, and the 

 voice deepens info a roar. 



The lion attains to maturity about the fifth year : 

 its term of lii'e is of considerable extent. Pompey, 

 which died in the tower in 1760, had been there for 

 seventy yeare, and one from the Gambia died there 

 at the age of sixty-three. Figure 16 is a fine repre- 

 sentation of a time-worn lion stretched out in the 

 act of expiring. Imagination pictures such a one 

 in the solitary desert : age has overtaken him, his 

 eye is dim, his tbrce abated, he fails in his once 

 fatal spring ; gaunt, and lean, and feeble, he drags 

 his weary limbs to the old haunt, — the haunt from 

 which he once went forth in the pride of his 

 strength, when his voice scattered terror through 

 the desert, — there at length to die. Better had he 

 fallen by the hunter's javelin when ' his limbs were 

 strong and his courage high ' than thus drain to the 

 dregs a miserable existence. 



It has long been a popular belief that the lion 

 lashes himself with his tail to stimulate himself info 

 a rage ; and though such a use for it is out of the 

 question, a sort of claw or prickle has been detected 

 at the termination of that organ. Mr. Benneft 

 detected it in the tip of the tail of a young Bavbaiy 

 lion. Blumenbach had previously ascertained the 

 fact of its existence in a specimen examined by 

 himself in 1829. M. Deshayes announced the ex- 

 istence of this prickle in a lion and lioness which 

 died in Paris menagerie. Mr. Woods detected it 

 only once out of numerous lions which he purposely 

 examined ; he also found a similar prickle on the 

 tip of the tail of an Asiatic leopard. 



This prickle is in fact only occasionally present ; 

 it is not connected' with the caudal vertebrae, but, 

 as Mr. Wood states, appears to be inserted into the 

 skin like the bulb of a bristle ; but M. Deshayes 

 asserts that it is of a conical shape, and adheres 

 to the skin by its base; as does also Blumenbach. 

 (See fig. 13.) We are much inclined to think it 

 nothing more than an indurated and partially de- 

 tached cuticle ; certainly it falls off with the 

 slightest touch. 



Hybrids between the lion and tigress (fig. 27) 

 have occurred in our country. One litter was pro- 

 duced in 1827 in Afkin's menagerie, and another 

 litter subsequently from similar parents was pro- 

 duced at Windsor. In both ca.ses the hybrids died 

 before arriving at maturity. Their colour was 

 brighter than that of true lion-cuhs and the bands 

 more defined and darker. 



Excepting in the vast wilds of Central Africa, un- 

 trodden by the foot of the white man, the lion, even 

 in the regions to which it is at present restricted, is 

 much more rare than formerly. The ancient Ro- 

 mans procured incredible multitudes for the arena : 

 Scylla brought a hundred mules at once into the 

 combat : Pompey gave six himdred, of which more 

 thanhalf were males ; CiPsar four hundred ; norwasit 

 until the time of the later emperors that any diffi- 

 culty in procuring them began to be experienced. ' 



There are few travellers in Africa who have not 

 been under the necessity of encountering this formid- 

 able beast. And many are the exciting narratives 

 which have been related, of the incidents of the 

 chase — of escape from almost ceitain death— of 

 triumph over the foe. 



The bushmen of Southern Africa, according to 

 Dr. Philip, are in the habit of insidiously attacking 



the slumbering lion with their poisoned arrows. 

 They have remarked that he generally kills and 

 devours his prey in the morning at sunrise or in the 

 evening at sunset ; and that he sleeps during the 

 heat of the day so profoundly as with difficulty to 

 be awakened ; and that when roused he seems to 

 lose all presence of mind. Marking the spot where 

 a lion is supposed to have taken up his quarters for 

 sleep, they cautiously advance, and silently lodge a 

 poisoned arrow in his breast. The lion, thus struck, 

 springs from his lair, and hounds off; but the work 

 is done, and the bushmen follow his tract, knowing 

 that in a few hours, or less, he will expire. 



28.— THE TIGER. 

 Tiypic {Tigris) of the Greeks ; Tigris of the Latins. 

 Tigre Royal, Buffon's Nat. Hist.; Felis Tigris, 

 Linn. 



The Royal Tiger, as it is often called to distin- 

 guish it from the smaller tiger-cats, is far more 

 limited in its range than the lion. It is exclusively 

 Asiatic. Hindostan may be considered as its head- 

 quarters, but it is common in the largei- islands, as 

 Sumatra, where it is a fearful scourge. It is said to 

 occur in the south of China, and also in the deserts 

 which separate China from Siberia, and !us far as the 

 banks of the Oby. It is found in Tonquin and 

 Siara. The ancients regarded India and Hyrcania 

 as nurseries of the tiger. Hyrcania was a province 

 of the ancient Persian empire at the south-eastern 

 corner of the Caspian Sea ; but its boundaries are 

 not very determinate. Whether the tiger still in- 

 habits this district is not very clear, there is no rea- 

 son however to doubt the concurrent testimonies o( 

 the ancient writers. 



The tiger is equal in size to the lion, but of a 

 more elongated ibrm, and pre-eminently graceful. 

 The head also is shorter and more rounded. Occa- 

 sionally individuals occur exceeding anv lion we 

 have contemplated in menageries ; but the average 

 height is from three feet six inches to four feet. 

 The general tint of the fur is of a fine yellow or red- 

 dish-yellow, ornamented by a series of transverse 

 black bands or stripes, which occupy the sides of 

 the head, neck, and body, and are continued on the 

 tail in the form of lings : the under parts of the 

 body and inner parts of the limbs are almost white. 

 Individuals are sometimes exhibited of a very p,ale 

 colour, with the stripes very obscure, and Du Halde 

 says that the Chinese tiger (Lou-chu or jC(rH-/!M)varies 

 in colour, some being white, striped with black and 

 grey. 



1 he ancients make frequent mention of the tiger, 

 with which it cannot be doubted that Aristotle was 

 well acquainted, though he talks of a breed in India 

 between this animal and the dog, meaning perhaps 

 the cheetah, which is used for the chase. Pliny 

 describes the 'tremendous velocity ' of thetigel', and 

 the devoted attachment of the tigress to her young. 

 ()])pian speaks of swift tigei's, the offspring of the 

 zephyr; and of its swiftness Mr. Bell the traveller, 

 and Pere Gerbillon, were witnesses in China, the 

 chase of this animal being a favourite diversion with 

 the great Cam-Hi, the Chinese monarch. It ap- 

 pears that Augustus was the first who exhibited a 

 tiger at Rome, which was tame and kept in a cage. 

 Claudius afterwards exhibited four, and Cuvier sug- 

 gests that it was in commemoration of this rare 

 spectacle that the mosaic, discovered some yeare 

 since at Rome, was made, representing four royal 

 tigers in the act of devouring their prey. As how- 

 ever India and its products became better known to 

 the Romans, the tiger became more familiar to 

 them, but was never exhibited in great numbers. 

 Ten were in the possession of Gordian III. 



Active, po.werful, and ferocious, the tiger is more 

 to be dreaded than the lion, because it is niore in- 

 sidious in its attack, and also prowls abroad by day 

 as well as by night. In some districts of India and 

 in Sumatra its ravages are frightful. We are in- 

 formed by Col. Sykes that in the province of Khan- 

 desli alone one thousand and thirty-two tigers were 

 killed from the year 1825 to 1829 inclusive, aecorf- 

 ing to the official returns. In Sumatra the infatu- 

 ated natives seldom attempt their destruction, having 

 a notion that they are animated by the souls of fheii 

 ancestois. Tiger-hunting is one of the favourite 

 field-sports of the East, and as the chase is not un- 

 attended with danger it is productive of jiroportion- 

 ate excitement. Though hoi'seraen as well as 

 persons on foot attend on these occasions, it is more 

 for the sake of ' being in at the death ' than of tak- 

 ing a decided part, for the horse will seldom stand 

 stea.dily when near this dreaded beast. It is to the 

 armed riders on elephants that the dangerous work 

 of rousing up the tiger from the jungle-covert is 

 left, and of firing at him as he bounds along. The 

 tiger's firet object is to escape under the covert of 

 the long grass or jungle ; but, when wounded or 

 hard pressed, he will turn with great fury, and by 

 springing on the elephant's head or shoulder endea- 

 vour to reach his antagonists. The agitation of the 



B 2 



