A Buffalo wounded by Lions 



extended from opposite to the elbow of his fore 

 leg to the top of his withers. This gash was 

 festering and suppurating badly in fact, it was 

 full of maggots. The birds we had seen fly from 

 the stricken beast had, in all probability, been 

 feeding on them. In addition to this sore, the 

 buffalo had his face badly cut by the lion's 

 claws. The gash here went to the bone and 

 extended from just above the nose to the base 

 of his horns. In addition to these wounds his 

 flanks were badly cut up and scored I think 

 probably by half or three-parts grown cubs. 

 No wonder the poor brute was sick and morose ; 

 he must have been in dreadful pain, and it was 

 a work of charity to put him out of his misery. 

 The way this beast had been attacked gave me 

 a very graphic idea of the manner in which lions 

 destroy a powerful animal like a buffalo. I 

 should say the mode of procedure had been 

 somewhat as follows. The lion, or lioness, 

 jumps at the prey in the neighbourhood of the 

 shoulder, holding on with the claws to the 

 opposite side ; with the claws of the other front 

 leg it seizes the nose of the prey, which it pulls 

 towards itself, keeping its own hind feet on the 

 ground during the struggle. It stands to reason 

 when the beast's neck is bent much to one side 

 that not only can they not see where they are 

 going, but that in a rough boggy country such 

 as this may be it is only a question of a few 



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