8o AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



fine dark mane. This he declared to be the skin of 

 a "swart voer-leif leeuw " (lion with the front 

 part of the body black) ; whilst the skin of a lioness 

 which showed a good many spots on the legs and 

 belly, he declared to be that of a " bont pod leeuw, 

 de kwai sort " (spotted - footed lion, the vicious 

 kind). As, however, these two animals were con- 

 sorting together when I shot them, I do not believe 

 that they belonged to different species or even races. 

 I am inclined to think that lions showing spots on 

 the legs and belly, when adult but still not old, 

 might very likely lose them in later life. 



In regard to wild lions, it may be said, as a 

 general proposition, that the mane usually grows 

 round the neck and on the chest only, with a 

 prolongation from the back of the neck to behind 

 the shoulder-blades. Sometimes large full-grown 

 male lions will be practically maneless. Occasionally 

 specimens will be met with in which the entire 

 shoulders as well as the neck will be covered with 

 mane. When writing of lions in 1881, I stated that 

 I had never seen the skin of a wild lion in which 

 the whole belly was covered with long hair, as is so 

 often the case with lions in captivity in this country, 

 though I had seen full-maned wild lions with large 

 tufts of long dark hair on the elbows and in the 

 flanks. A few years later, however, Lo Bengula, 

 the last chief of the Matabele, gave me the skin of 

 a lion which had been killed near the upper course 

 of the Umzingwani river, not far from Bulawayo, 

 with a very fine mane. In this specimen the tufts 

 of hair in the flanks were very profuse, almost 

 meeting across the belly, and there were a few long 

 hairs all over the under parts of the skin. There 

 is also, I think, good evidence to show that in the 

 more southerly portions of South Africa lions not 

 infrequently developed a growth of long hair all 

 over their bellies ; for not only are all the lions 



