THE LEOPARD 43 



leading even the most truth-loving of men along strange 

 paths ! 



/Should his career not be prematurely cut short, the 

 ultimate fate of the lion is rather pathetic. Having for 

 years roamed the forest, his supremacy unchallenged 

 by any other of its wild denizens, he at length grows old ; 

 his fangs become worn down to mere stumps, his bodily 

 powers begin to fail, and he is no longer able to capture 

 his ordinary prey. If a male, he has long ere this been 

 driven away from the family party by younger and 

 stronger rivals, and has since led a solitary and anxious 

 existence. At length the time arrives when he finds 

 himself compelled to exist only on such small mammals 

 as he can pounce on and easily kill ; he becomes gaunter 

 and weaker day by day, until, unable to seek food of any 

 kind, he lays himself down, a sad spectacle of departed 

 glory, and a prey for the hyaena, the jackal, and the 

 vulture. Females remain longer associated with their 

 comrades than males ; but they, too, at last become 

 unfitted for the strenuous wandering life, and their end 

 is the same as that of the other sex. 



CHAPTER V 

 THE LEOPARD 



THE leopard is the most widely distributed of all the 

 larger cats, being found at the present day throughout a 

 considerable portion of Asia and most of Africa. 



Thanks to its intensely secretive and strictly nocturnal 

 habits, as well as to its natural cunning and its com- 

 prehensive diet, it is always the last of the larger carnivora 

 to vanish from areas opened^up by civilization, and long 

 survives the final disappearance of the big game. 



