546 Great and Small Game of Africa 



description. Varying in colour from pale silvery or tawny to dark tawny, 

 and more rarely dark gray with a warm brown suffusion, no two skins are 

 exactly alike in shade. Lions are usually darker than lionesses, but the 

 latter retain on their lower limbs the bars and spots of cubhood (declaring 

 their descent from a less uniformly-coloured ancestry) more distinctly than 

 the former. Lions without a vestige of mane are sometimes met with ; 

 and when the mane is present, it varies greatly in quantity and colour in 

 individuals. No tenable theory has yet been advanced to account for the 

 paucity or absence of mane in some cases ; the idea that the dense bush 

 in certain localities drags it out, and that, ergo, lions inhabiting open districts 

 should have good manes, has no foundation in fact. I think the cause is 

 purely constitutional. The mane is usually bright tawny yellow on the 

 cheeks, and may be so throughout, with a darker tint at the tips on 

 shoulder and neck ; or it may be deep brownish yellow, or, in finer and rarer 

 specimens, dark brownish black with black tips ; in old animals the mane is 

 often grizzled with white hairs. Commencing to grow at three years, it 

 attains its full size when the animal is between six and seven years old. 1 

 The horny appendage in the brush at a lion's tail-tip is not always constant ; 

 its length is from 8 to 12 millimetres, and its use is not known. The 

 pupils of the eyes are circular, the claws fully retractile, powerful, and 

 trenchant. They are never exposed when a lion is walking, but often 

 thrown out by a wounded lion when moving rapidly. The thumb-claw 

 of a large lion I shot last year measured 3^ inches in length, and i-jj- inches 

 in basal width. The size of lions is a fruitful theme of discussion amongst 

 sportsmen, and I have heard some surprising statements made on the 

 subject. Careful observation has convinced me that an average full-grown 

 male measures about 9 feet from tip to tip in a straight line : i.e. from 

 nose to root of tail, 6 feet; tail, 2 feet 10 inches to 3 feet; vertical 



