"THE LION IN SOUTH AFRICA 321 
- animals, they approach the native villages and prey on the 
goats and dogs, and if they are not destroyed soon take to 
killing women and children. In countries where both game 
and lions abound, I presume that the old and weakly lions can 
always get a living, like the hyenas, on the remains of the 
carcases of animals killed by younger and more vigorous 
animals. As man is not the lion’s usual food, most lions 
would probably give way before a human being even on a dark 
night and allow him to pass unmolested, provided they were 
not hungry ; but were a man to come within the ken of a 
hungry lion under such circumstances I should look upon him 
as a dead man whether he were armed or not, for the lion 
would probably spring upon him suddenly from behind and 
give him no time to make use of his weapon. Therefore I 
look upon it as foolhardy in the extreme to walk along a road 
or a native footpath, on a dark night, in countries which are 
infested by lions, if you can avoid doing so. You may walk 
twenty times at night before meeting a lion at all; and you 
may meet twenty lions before encountering a really hungry 
animal; but when you do at last meet him, he will, most 
assuredly, be the last lion that you will have any knowledge of 
in this world. 
There is an old fable, still believed in more or less, that the 
lion is a very clean feeder, and that he will eat nothing but the 
flesh of an animal that he has killed himself. That has not 
been my experience. On the contrary, I have found that, even 
where game abounds, lions will seldom pass the carcase of an 
animal killed by a hunter, but will almost invariably feed on 
it, even though the flesh be quite putrid. Sometimes when 
several elephants have been shot, lions will feast on the stink- 
‘ing carcases as long as there is any soft meat left, and I have 
known this to happen in a country where game of various kinds 
was plentiful, especially zebras, which are always a favourite 
food of lions. However, although the lion is not a clean feeder 
in the sense that he will only eat fresh meat, he is wonderfully 
dexterous in disembowelling a carcase, without messing the 
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