LIONS 



will often make a vigorous and successful defence. 

 Lions often hunt in concert, stalking their prey most 

 skilfully ; they communicate with one another by modu- 

 lated roaring. When watching for game near the drink- 

 ing-places, the lion will crouch on an elevated point — 

 the steep bank of a brook, for instance — and then rush 

 at his prey with an astounding leap, sometimes of 

 twenty - four feet. The lion is not able to climb 

 trees. 



During the dry season lions are apt to concentrate in 

 considerable numbers near the drinking-places. Near 

 the brook where I was most successful in taking flash- 

 light pictures of lions, more than thirty of various sizes 

 and ages had made their lairs, as I could calculate their 

 number by the tracks left by the beasts. They begin 

 to range over the whole country as soon as the rainy 

 season sets in, to follow their game. 



I am unable to decide in what proportion the famous 

 French lion hunter, M. Jules Gerard, has mixed truth 

 and fiction in the narrative of liis adventures. He 

 killed in North Africa forty lions or more, and was 

 feted in Algiers like a hero. 



No doubt he was a man of rare courage, but also a 

 good deal of a romancer. However fanciful many of his 

 tales may be, he is without doubt right when he says, 

 " Who has never seen an adult lion in the state of free- 

 dom may believe in a hand-to-hand fight with this 

 powerful animal; who has seen one knows that an un- 



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