750 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



all plain sailing. The only difficulty was how to mount it without 

 making some slight noise and disturbing the lion in its slumbers, 

 but the pagi was equal to the occasion. It was all done by signs — 

 he stooped down ; I stepped on his back, and as he gradually raised 

 himself, I was able to step off on to the stump without the lion 

 being a bit the wiser ! There was no difficulty about a shot now. 

 The lion was lying on its side with its legs towards us. The others 

 were very quickly behind me, and when Ismail nodded to show that 

 he was quite ready I fired, I only just had time to get in a second 

 shot, which I think must have glanced off a bough as I could find 

 no signs of it afterwards on the lion, before the latter was charging 

 down upon us. I could of course do nothing with an emptied rifle 

 in my hands, but fortunately for us, one of Ismail's two shots fired 

 at uncomfortably close quarters, saved the situation ! It struck the 

 lion in the back and the latter instead of charging home, swerved, 

 and just missing us, went tearing down the hill. Its race was 

 however run, for as I looked round to watch it, it turned a complete 

 somersault and after rolling over and over again lay perfectly 

 still. 



It was dead. My first shot had broken up in its chest, but if it 

 had not been for Ismail's lucky one, some of us would have fared 

 rather badly. 



It was an old lion and its total length was 9 feet 5 inches, the 

 length of its tail being 2 feet 11 inches. 



A few days afterwards I shot a 7 '-4" panther, and then left the 

 Gir, nearly every soul in my camp being down with malarious 

 fever. 



Two years later when I was encamped at Hathina Malia, a 

 Garassia village on the borders of the Grir country, H. H. the 

 Nawab was kind enough to grant me permission to shoot another 

 lion. I rode the 22 miles to Sasan, on the 1st June, and as I had 

 only a few days at my disposal, I had already sent out the pagis 

 to look out for lions. For two days there was not a vestige of 

 Jchubber, but on the third, when I had already mounted my horse 

 for the purpose of returning to Malia, a sowar rode in to say that 

 two lions had broken during the night into a zareha at the 

 Nandwao Ness, about 4 miles distant from Sasan, and done a lot of 



