38 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL SIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVII. 



the latter province, in 1842. It was however extinct in Sind before that 

 date and the last on record was shot near Kot Deji in 1810. Exactly 

 how far eastwards the lion was a regular inhabitant we do not know, though 

 there is a statement of one being killed in the Palamaw district, Behar 

 and Orissa, in 1814, but whether this was merely a straggler or not, there 

 is no evidence to show. The southernmost limit appears to have been the 

 Narbada. In 1832 one was killed at Baroda, while further north it was 

 comparatively common round Ahmedabad in 1836. Central India in 

 these early days was one of the strongholds of the lion and to give an 

 idea of its numbers we may mention that Lydekker was informed that 

 during the Mutiny, Colonel George Acland Smith killed upwards of 300 

 Indian lions and out of this number 50 were accounted for in the Delhi 

 district ! 



The occurrence of the lion in Cutch is doubtfully recorded. The lion 

 probably was found in Cutch at one time but the records are not satisfac- 

 tory. Lt. Dodd m.entions that Burns about 1830 wrote that lions as well 

 as tigers, bears and wolves were found north of Bhooj, but that none except 

 the last named were now found, though a solitary lion was shot near Bela 

 on the Runn, which was supposed to have been a straggler from Guzerat. 



Edward Blyth, the curator of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, in his 

 catalogue of the mammals in the collection, which was published in 1863, 

 wrote that the " lion was extirpated in Hurriana about 1842, a female 

 was killed at Rhyl in Damoh district Saugor and Nerbudda territories, so 

 late as the cold season of 1847-48, and about the same time a few still 

 remain in the valley of the Sind river in Kotah, C. I. The species would 

 appear to be now extinct in that district." 



A few years later writing in the Oriental Sporting Magazine, Blyth 

 drew attention to some more recent records of the lion, which he said 

 must have come as a surprise to sportsmen and naturalists, as it was thought 

 that they had been long exterminated in these localities. 



These two records consisted of one from Deesa, where Lt. Clarke of the 

 Royal Artillery was badly mauled by a lioness in March 1864 and lost his 

 arm, and near Gwalior, where three officers out shooting in March of the 

 following year came suddenly on three lions, two of which they secured. 

 Blyth seems to have missed certain records, for in 1863 Col. Martin of the 

 Central Indian Horse, and Mr. Beadon, the Deputy Commissioner, saw and 

 killed no less than eight lions at Patulghar, 70 miles north-west of Goona 

 while in 1864 Mr. Arratoon of the police " shot at and wounded a lion near 

 Sheorajpur (25 miles west of Allahabad) and eventually with native help 

 stoned him to death as he had no spare ammunition." In 1866 Blanford 

 tells us that Messrs. Lovell and Kelsay, of the railway staff at Jubbulpore, 

 shot a lion in Rewah near the 80th mile stone on the railway from Allahabad 

 to Jubbulpore, and in the same year no less than nine lions were shot by 

 one party in the neighbourhood of Kotah, Rajputana. 



Round Goona lions were still numerous and two or three were shot in 

 1867, and Blanford, writing in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 

 for that year, says " a few appear to be killed about Gwalior and Goona, but 

 the animal is scarce." At the end of his article he summarized the distri- 

 bution of the lion in India at that date as follows : — " The lion seems still 

 to exist in three isolated parts of central and western India, omitting its 

 occasional occurrence in Bundelkund. These are (1) from near Gwalior to 

 Kotah, (2) around Deesa and Mt. Abu and thence southwards nearly to 

 Ahmedabad and (3) in part of Kathiawar, in the jungles known as the 

 Ghur." 



On Waterloo day, 1872, Sir Montagu Gerard killed a lion on Cheen 

 Hill, nine miles from Goona, and the last one in Central India proper 



