202 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



Brown bears hang round the hotels, and come daily 

 to eat the refuse carted into the woods close by, and 

 many of the smaller rodents are absolutely fearless. 



In menageries and zoological gardens the fear of 

 man is lost mainly by constant and daily contact, with 

 no power to escape, and by the remembrance that 

 it is man who provides their food. But here the 

 conditions are abnormal, and it would be useless to 

 draw conclusions from the behaviour towards man of 

 animals in captivity, and apply them to the solution 

 of the earlier problem of the innate or acquired 

 character of their fear of human beings. It is, how- 

 ever, matter of general knowledge that where man 

 is weak and beasts strong and numerous, as in the 

 country watered by the Zambesi and Shire" rivers, the 

 boldness of the animals leads to serious disasters. In 

 the present day the only frequent reports of attacks of 

 lions and leopards on men for food, and not in self- 

 defence or fright, come from these districts, though 

 the story is as old as the rebuilding of Samaria. 



African lions are, beyond question, the boldest of 

 all predatory animals, and those of Mashonaland and 

 Uganda are perhaps the boldest of all. During the 

 night, their natural hunting-time, they attack draught 

 animals, or even men, within a few yards of the 

 camp-fires, and are a constant and serious danger to 

 travellers in districts remote from the main tracks 

 of traders. From the Zambesi, through Mashonaland, 

 and south to the Limpopo, a chorus of complaints 

 rises in the pages of recent travellers, whose cattle or 

 followers have suffered from their attacks. Mr. Selous 



