FLESH-EATERS OF THE LAND 



resembling thunder.' Gordon Gumming adds that 'the 

 grandeur of these nocturnal forest concerts is inconceivably 

 striking, and pleasing to the hunter's ear.' A trooper in 

 Mashonaland hearing the Lion's roar for the first time was 

 impressed differently : 



' I have often heard that a Lion's roar is very terrible. It 

 is ; and if you want thoroughly to appreciate it, you must 

 be lying in the open with two of them at it less than twenty 

 yards off, in the middle of the night. The noise is hard to 

 describe, but it is most like about fifty cows bellowing all at 

 once, and with a tremendous vibration in it, which goes 

 through and through you.' 



That Lions can be dangerous neighbours, carrying off 



much cattle and occa- 

 sionally killing human 

 beings, cannot be denied. 

 Their strength is enor- 

 mous, and a full-grown 

 Lion can pull down any 

 animal except the 

 elephant and the rhino- 

 ceros. In Mashonaland 

 a Lioness killed a hun- 

 dred pigs in a single 

 night. She had entered 

 a range of pens, and 

 after killing and eating 



one animal found that she could not return owing to a 

 closing door ; the result was that she wandered from pen 

 to pen in her efforts to escape and put to death every 

 animal that she encountered. The appetite of a hungry 

 Lion is enormous. It gulps down huge quantities of meat, 

 often a good-sized antelope at a meal. 



' Man-eaters,' as they are called, are almost invariably 

 the old and somewhat decrepit animals, too stiffened by 

 age to catch the active antelope or master the powerful 

 buffalo. Such Lions take to haunting the native villages in 

 hope of picking up a stray ox or a child or aged people, 

 unable to oppose them. There are, of course, exceptions to 

 the general rule. A ' man-eater ' that killed thirty-seven 



SKULL OF THE LION. 

 (About one-sixth natural size.) 



