EAST AFRICAN MAMMALS. 723 



the side of a hut in an eftbrt to reach the occupants, who also 

 scared them off with aii oiitcry. On 15. ii. 21 we heard their 

 persistence had been rewai-ded, for they killed a man at Kivungvi 

 and ate him except for the head. They appeared to be changing 

 tlieir beat and making towards Myombo, where they mauled a 

 man a fortnight ago who was rescued by his friends. 



A scout liad been sent to Kivungu to set tiaps and was in a 

 hut, when the door was burst open by a lion : a woman was 

 sleeping close to the door. He ran outside and saw the lion 

 standing not twenty feet from him, but could not fire as it was 

 in line with another lint. On 17. ii, they broke into another 

 hut at Kivungu, five hundred yards from the one forced the night 

 before. The only occupants were a woman and child, and she 

 scrambled to the flimsy reed shelf above the door and screamed. 

 She told me that the lion stood in the doorAvay but was afraid to 

 enter. The neighbours then beat tins and lit torches, so that she 

 was able to run across to an adjacent hut. When Ihey had gone 

 to sleep and all was quiet the lions returned, dragged out the bed 

 to the edge of the clearing sixty feet away and ate the plaited 

 cords, which doubtless reeked of liuman beings, and smaslicd up 

 the framework, which I myself saw early the following morning. 



On 18. ii. they broke into a hut between Kivungu and M3'ombo 

 and dragged out a basket of beans and ate the basket;., they then 

 crossed some five miles of coiTntry to Tindiga, broke into a hut 

 there, and nearly got a man. On 19. ii, one of them entered 

 a hut before it was dark — tl)ey were obviously hungry — it was 

 frightened off and a tra.p set, which caused its death at dusk when 

 it retiu-ned. Its companion entered a second trap a few hours 

 Later, and the man-hunting automatically ceased. 



I measured these lions carefully and independently, and found 

 them exactly alike with the j^ossiblo exception of a half-inch 

 difference in the length of ears. Both were tawny, maneless 

 males in well-nourished condition, presuma,bly brothers of the 

 same litter. The one had the remains of a wild-pig and some 

 grass in its stomach ; the other had nothing but some parasitic 

 worms. Length of head and body, 67 inches. Tail 31 inches. 



Another instance of man-killing occurred on the niglit 8-9. v. 21 , 

 Svhen a. lioness appeared to have become desperate from hunger. 

 I'he circumstances as I reconstructed then\ from the S]ioor and 

 native statements were tlius : — ^J^he lioness first appeared (unseen), 

 in some rank grass outside a native kraal, where it crouched, 

 wriggled about, and wa.tched a large party sitting arotmd a fire 

 inside the stockade. She then rose up and, Avith a "woof, woof," 

 trotted through the doorway and seized a youth of fourteen by 

 the thigh, and started back for the doorway. The jumbe, who 

 was a verj'- old man and decrepit, pursued the lioness, striking 

 her with his bare hand on her quarteis as she made for the 

 doorway — the compound was an unusually large one. When she 

 rea,ched it the body stuck crosswise, and after a couple of attempts 

 and with the persistent old man still spanking her, she dropped 



