55 : 



Great and Small Game of Africa 



them. For this reason they invariably collect in the vicinity of a hunter's 

 camp. I know many exceptions, particularly on the Urema flats, P.E.A., 

 where I have placed forty baits from time to time, but though lions 

 abounded and often walked round and inspected these baits, they only 

 twice ate of them. Man-eaters are rare in South Africa. In all my 

 experience I have only met one, a cunning old lioness, which, as fully 

 related in my work on African sport, I shot after no end of trouble. I 

 assisted to kill another, a young male, which I may call a potential man- 

 eater, its only known deviation from the path of duty, up till the day of 

 its death, having been the killing and eating of one native woman. In 

 the Pungwe district, however, several natives have at different times made 

 the acquaintance of the internal economy of lions. Lionesses have no fixed 

 breeding season, but cubs are usually born in March and April ; two or 

 three is the usual number in a litter, rarely four, and their eyes are fully 

 open at birth. They are barred with transverse stripes, and thickly spotted 

 on the limbs. These marks are lost as they grow older, only a very few 

 spots being retained on the lower limbs of adults. The fur is thick and 

 woolly. At from five to six months old they accompany their mother to 

 a kill, and game is fearfully mangled by young lions of ten or twelve months 

 old, when undergoing tuition in the art of killing under their parents' 

 watchful eyes. Comparatively few male cubs reach maturity, hence the 

 disparity between the numbers of each sex. The males are said to be 

 monogamous, and I have myself thought so, but I could not now express 

 a decided opinion, as single lions are so often seen with two or three lionesses, 

 and the relative numbers of both sexes are so disproportionate that I think 

 the theory of monogamy is open to question. At all events the lion hunts 

 for the parturient lioness, and evinces the greatest affection for his partner. 



Lions may be systematically hunted in three ways, given here in 

 order of preference— by visiting their own kill, or a placed bait (for the 

 kill is hard to find in a country where vultures and hysnas abound), 



