Pee Animal Life 
coming along at a great pace, growl- 
ing savagely and evidently prepared 
to make things warm for the first 
human being he met. I let him come 
on to within about fifty yards of the 
tree in which I was perched and 
then shot him right in the chest 
with an expanding bullet, which tore 
open his heart and killed him almost 
immediately. This is the last of the 
thirty-one lions I have shot, and the 
first and only one of these animals 
that I have shot from a tree. He 
was a fine full-grown animal, just in 
his prime, with a good mane for a 
coast lon, very thick set and heavy 
in build, and enormously fat. My first 
two bullets had struck him close to- 
gether just below the tail, and either 
would probably have killed him had 
it been a solid projectile, but bemg 
expanding bullets they had probably 
not penetrated beyond the stomach. 
We found subsequently, on examiming 
the place where he had been lying 
in the grass at the foot of the ant-hill, 
that he had vomited great lumps of 
the meat: and skin of a wildebeest on 
ave — which he had been feasting the pre- 
““T let him come ec reee rete a of the treo in ceding night. My third bullet had 
struck him too far back, behind the 
kidneys, and passing just below the backbone had momentarily paralysed his hind- 
quarters, causing him to fall when hit and subsequently to show weakness in the 
hind legs. 
LONG-EARED OWL. 
Our coloured plate this month is from a photograph, by Mr. R. B. Lodge, of the 
Long-eared Owl (Asio otus). Although, like the poor, always with us, its numbers are 
considerably increased during the Autumn by migrations from the Continent. It is a 
handsome bird with somewhat cat-like colouring, and large round, fiery, yellow eyes 
which give it a rather uncanny appearance. It lays its eggs very early (sometimes 
while the snow is still on the ground) in an old squirrel’s dvey or in the deserted 
nest of a crow, rook, heron, magpie, ctc. Its food consists chiefly of mice, rats, and 
11sects. 
4 
