CLAW IN LION'S TAIL— HUNTING 



CHEETA. 



Many old naturalists have asserted that lions have a 

 spike, or claw, in the termination of their tails, and 

 this belief was supported by Buffon. Most lovable 

 of all English writers, Goldsmith, also took for granted 

 what his predecessors wrote on natural history. For 

 the first-mentioned I can offer no excuse ; for the 

 latter's error there are palliative circumstances. His 

 kind, affectionate nature made him an ardent lover of 

 the brute creation, and nothing afforded him greater 

 pleasure than to listen to anecdotes about them, that 

 had a tendency to raise his favourites to a higher 

 sphere than was generally awarded them by his 

 compeers. In a work published nearly half a century 

 ago, I read many stories of the childlik simplicity 

 of this remarkable man. It was stated in it that 

 one of his chief amusements was to visit Wai)ping, 

 Deptford, and similar mariner-haunted places, for the 

 purpose of ingratiating himself with the ordinary 

 seamen, and learning from them all information 

 obtainable about " foreign parts," strange and distant 

 races, and, more especially, peculiarities of the inferior 

 animal creation. 



It can well be imagined how our generous historian 

 u.^ed to be victimized by "Jack/' for he believed all 

 that he heard, being too truthful and confiding 

 himself to think that another would stoop to defile 

 his lips >vith a lie. All the wonderful yarns that he 



