THE LION IN SOUTH AFRICA 329 



regarding the weight and measurements of wild lions which I 

 can vouch for as being authentic. 



Many years ago a lion was shot one night at Kati in 

 Western Matabeleland inside the cattle kraal, where it had 

 killed an ox, and the next morning early the carcase was placed 

 on the large scale used for weighing ivory, which stood under 

 the verandah of one of the traders' houses at only a few yards 

 distance from the cattle kraal. This lion weighed 376 Ibs. ; it 

 was a large full-grown animal, but in low condition. 



In 1887 a lion, shot by niyself and friends close to our 

 waggon, was carried into camp and carefully weighed, and was 

 found to turn the scale at 385 Ibs. This was a fine animal in 

 good condition but with no fat about him, and my impression 

 at the time was that he would have grown bigger and heavier, 

 as his mane was short, and did not appear to have reached its 

 full length and beauty. 



In the end of 1891 I shot a very large lion at Hartley Hills 

 in Mashonaland, and weighed and measured it carefully, as it 

 was killed within three hundred yards of the settlement. This 

 animal, which was a remarkably fine specimen of a wild lion, 

 was in excellent condition, its whole belly being covered with a 

 layer of fat quite half an inch in thickness ; it was also a very 

 large animal, as its measurements will show, and I was much 

 surprised to find that its weight was not greater than it proved 

 to be. As the scale on which I weighed it only registered 

 a weight of 220 Ibs., I had to skin and cut the lion up, and 

 weigh him by instalments, and the aggregate of the weights 

 was 408 Ibs. As a good deal of blood was lost when his head 

 was cut off, I will add two pounds to this figure, and say that this 

 lion's dead weight was not less than 410 Ibs. I was much dis- 

 appointed with this lion, as I expected him to weigh 500 Ibs. 

 He was an old animal, and might have weighed more when he 

 was a few years younger, as in spite of being fat and well fed, 

 I don't think his quarters were so rounded and muscular as 

 they might have been. The measurements of his skull which 

 is now in the collection of the Natural History Museum at South 



