166 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 
through Thessaly as far south as the Gulf of Lepanto and the Isthmus of Corinth, having 
as its western boundary the River Potamo and the Pindus Mountains. 
The next mention of the European Lion we find in Xenophon’s ‘Treatise on Hunting,’ 
which he composed on his banishment from Athens, after he had exchanged the court and 
the camp for the pleasures of gardening and hunting, in his splendid retreat in Lace- 
demon, about the year 380 B.c.'—“ Now, Lions, Pardaleis, Lynxes, Panthers, Bears, and 
the like beasts, are caught in foreign countries in the neighbourhood of Mount Pangeum 
and Mount Cissus, which is beyond Macedonia, and in the Mysian Olympus, and im 
Pindus, and in Nyse that is above Syria, and in other mountains that are able to support 
such animals.” Mount Pangzeum is situated near the sources of the Nestus, not far from 
the range of Rhodope (of the Balkans), Cissus is close to Thessalonica, and therefore this 
passage corroborates strongly the statement given by Herodotus as to the range of the 
animal, the only difference being that Xenophon states that it inhabited the Despoto Dagh 
Mountains of Roumelia, the eastern watershed of the Nestus, instead of its being restricted 
to the western bank of that river. Baron Cuvier,’ indeed, and the late Right-Honorable 
Sir George Cornewall Lewis*® agree in refusing historical value to this passage, because 
other localities in Asia are mentioned, believing that all these animals were not found in 
any one of these localities. But the fact that the Lion lived in that area, both before and after 
Xenophon’s time, coupled with the fact that the Panther, Lynx, and Bear ranged through 
Europe in company in Post-glacial times, renders it very probable that he was scien- 
tifically accurate when he advised their capture in that district, by placing poisoned food 
near their drinking places. The Lynx and Bear still live in the same neighbourhood, and 
the Panther still remains in Asia Minor, bereft of his congener the Lion. 
The historical value of the account of the range of the Lion in Europe given by 
Herodotus and Xenophon is corroborated by the testimony of the great father of natural 
history, Aristotle, who flourished some fifty years after the time of the latter writer, and 
who, being a native of Stagira, lived in the very district said to have been inhabited by 
the Lion. He describes its European range very nearly in the same words as those used 
by Herodotus; but in the hundred and fifty years that elapsed between their dates the 
hunter and the husbandman had made great inroads on the last foothold of the Lion in 
Burope. The “ woAdot Agorrec,” “the many Lions,” spoken of by the one had dwindled 
1 Zevopovroc Kuvnyercde. Cap. xi, 1. Agovtec 02, tapdadete, AbyKec, TaVvOnpEc, apKrot Kat 
» ws ~ ~ X = lj X ‘ 
TdAXa boca tort to.avta Ofpia aXrloxera év Eevare ywpae wept To Tlayyatov dpog kat Tov Kirrov 
~ ~ ~ ‘ > ? ~ - ~ IX. 
Td Umep Tie Makedoviac, rad tv 7d "OXuTY TH Mvoly kai ev Livdy, ra 8 tv rH Nboy TH UTEp 
ms , \ ‘ ~ > ” v4 a 23 , = 
Tii¢ Lupiac Kal Tpde Toic adAote Spec, doa ola T zoTL TPEPELW TOLAUTA. 
2 “Oss. Foss.,’ 3e édit., 4to., t. iv, p. 425. 
3 «Notes and Queries,’ second series, viii, 1895, ‘‘ Lions in Greece.” We are indebted for several of 
the references to classical works to the learning of this eminent critic. 
