THE LION IN SOUTH AFRICA 329 
regarding the weight and measurements of wild lions which I 
can youch 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 lbs. ; it 
was a large full-grown animal, but in low condition. 
In 1887 a lion, shot by myself and friends close to our 
waggon, was carried into camp and carefully weighed, and was 
found to turn the scale at 385 lbs. 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 lbs. 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 lbs. 
__ 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 
