986 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol, X11t. 
though I took a different point of the compass and went for a long tramp, 
I could fine no traces of him. 
My companion was at this time on the sick-list, but by the fourth day I 
had got very tired of seeing nothing, and as he felt just well enough to get 
along on his riding-camel, we decided to make a short 12-mile march, I had 
fairly scoured the country by this time so did not go out on my own account, 
but I walked along quietly a few yards ahead of my companion, hoping to 
pick up a Digdig for the larder, We had been marching thus about an hour 
and-a-half,in a bee-line southwards, and must have covered quite 4 miles, 
when we hit off the previous night’s tracks of two lions, crossing our path at 
right-angles. It was hard to kelieve that the owners of these footprints 
had been responsible for the roars we heard, but it was impossible to come 
to any other conclusion, This morning, and in fact every morning since 
our arrival at our last camp, eight men had started out in pairsat dawn to 
the four points of the compass to search the ground for lion tracks, 
arranging their several beats in such a way that between them they made a 
complete circuit, with a radius of a couple of miles, round our camp ; and J 
myself was wont t; await their return before making my plans for the day. 
This morning there was no doubt that the southern segment of the circle 
had been completed, because the scouts had all returned before we started, 
and we had in fact taken the tracks of the couple which had gone southwards 
to save ourselves the trouble of picking a new path through the bush, and 
these tracks we had long ago left at the point where the men had finished their 
2-mile radius and had turned of to the right along the circumference. As these 
scouts had reported having seen no lion tracks, it was practically certain that 
the lions had n:t come within the 2-mile circle, and here was their fresh 
spoor, travelling in a general direction of west to east four miles south of last 
night’s zareeba! Cur trackers expressed no doubt whatever that these were 
the two lions that we had heard calling, and seemed to think that it was quite 
natural for their roars to have been heard distinctly at this distance, and even 
at a greater distance still. ‘The country in question was perfectly level plain, 
covered with fairly close bush jungle and patches of grass, and the nights 
had been perfectly clear and still. I admit that four miles seems to me an 
unconscionable distance for a lion’s roar to penetrate even under the most 
favourable conditions of windand ground, but I do not remember ever having 
seen the question discussed before,or any approximate distance mentioned, 
and as it is a point upon which it is obviously useful for a shikari to have 
accurate knowledge, I should be much interested to hear the opinions of 
others on the subject, which is after all simply a question of acoustics, 
But this by the way. The hill under which our next camp was to be was 
in sight, and the lion tracks led right away from it, so I left my invalid com- 
panion and the caravan, and leaving orders for my riding camel to come on 
behind, started off with my trusty little Midgan to follow the spoor, 
