202 Animal Life 
and. tiger will never succeed in perpetuating a race of feline mules. Hybrids are 
notoriously infertile, and although mares—the mules of horses and asses—have strong 
maternal instincts, and will even develop milk and suckle young foals, which they 
manage to decoy away from their true mothers, there is, I believe, no genuine recorded 
instance of such a mule bringing forth offspring of her own. Already, I understand, Mr. 
Hagenbeck has mated the big lion-tiger hybrid with other pure-bred felines, but with no 
result. Darwin long since pointed out, in his “Origin of Species,’ that “hybrids raised 
from two species which are very difficult to cross, and which rarely produce any offspring, 
are generally very sterile.” That assertion seems to be borne out strongly by the present 
case, and it seems altogether unlikely that any perpetuation of this new kind of fancy 
stock is to be looked for. Nor, indeed, is it desirable. In their own wild habitats, and 
after their own fashion, lions and tigers are necessary and yery splendid creatures. A 
bastard strain from the crossing of these two species is not in the least likely to add to 
TWO MALE LION-TIGERS OF A MALE LION AND TIGRESS. 
Born 28th April, 1901. Height, 30 in. up to shoulder ; length, 91 in. 
the beauty of the wildernesses of Africa or Asia or to the usefulness of two necessary 
forms in the scheme of nature. Nor in civilized countries, beyond the mere fact of 
producing a “sport,” or curiosity, are these hybrids likely to be of interest or of use to 
anyone. In this case, at all events, nature seems to have wisely set limits which even 
the ingenuity of man is not likely to be able to evade. The causes of the sterility of 
first crosses and of their hybrid progeny were subjects that puzzled even that profound 
thinker and enquirer, Darwin. He arrived at the conclusion that such sterility had not 
been acquired by natural selection. “In the case of hybrids,” he says, “it (sterility) 
apparently depends on their whole organisation having been disturbed by being com- 
pounded by two distinct forms; the sterility beimg closely 
4 
allied to that which so frequently affects pure species, AY Ge Ay Olen. 
when exposed to new and unnatural conditions.” 
