THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
over a bait at night... I have never myself shot more than two lions 
in one night, but a man whom I met in the country showed me the skins 
of four he had shot when sitting up over the body of a dead elephant. It 
was very dark or he might have got any number.” 1 
One of the statements often met with is that a lion is inca- 
pable of any considerable speed, and never chases prey which 
escapes his first rush. Baldwin is only one of many who have 
found that it may put a horse to his best paces to keep a lion 
who really wants a ride from climbing into the saddle by way of 
the crupper. Another hunter relates that he once saw a heavy 
lion which had failed to stalk successfully a black gnu chase 
it fifteen hundred yards, although it had had a long start, and 
fairly catch it. So the exceptions go; yet the rule is, that the 
great cat lies in wait by some drinking place, or rushes from a 
hiding in a thicket or on a rock whence it may spring far, or 
creeps through tall grass until near enough for the leap, the fell- 
ing blow, and the clutch with talons and teeth, which at once drag 
down and tear apart the stricken quarry. It is at night that the 
most serious hunting is done. The dusk deepening on the 
veldt resounds with the roars of ravenous lions setting forth 
upon their forays, careless whether the game hear and take 
warning; and no ox or antelope, stately giraffe or timid ga- 
zelle, approaches its drinking place — especially when this 
is only some spring-fed basin in the plain — without a shrink- 
ing dread which nothing but thirst could overcome, for in every 
wind-stirred grass tuft he thinks he sees a lion’s gathering 
spring, and each shadow takes the shape of this deadly terror 
of the night. 
Another tradition is that a lion having chosen a mate keeps 
her as long as one or the other survives. How nearly true 
this is we do not know. In the first place, the 
choice seems to lie with the female rather than on 
the part of the male; and the continuance of the union appears 
to depend upon the power of the lion to hold his fickle spouse 
IIo 
Mating. 
