FEEDING HABITS AND FARE 
The lion feeds on anything he can get. He has been starved 
out rather than killed out of Asia, and survives in Mesopo- 
tamia and eastern Persia mainly on the half-wild pjctibu- 
pigs and goats of the peasantry. In prehistoric o- 
days there were wild horses, asses, and camels to sustain him 
on the Asian steppes, as well as saigaks and similar game; 
and afterward he naturally became a scourge of the caravan 
roads. Increasing by their high birth rate more rapidly than 
any other beast of prey, only persistent resistance could keep 
down these ravagers; thus, when the Jews came back from 
their long captivity in Babylon they found Judea overrun 
with lions. Later, when Xerxes’ hordes were moving through 
the mountainous country northwest of the ASgean Sea, on 
their way to overwhelm Greece, serious hindrance was caused 
by the attacks of lions on their camel trains. Buffon’s asser- 
tion that in the Sahara a single lion would attack a whole cara- 
van is not true, as a rule, if it ever happened — there. Lions 
are practically absent from the real desert, where there is 
little chance for food; and this is a point to be noticed in re- 
spect to the hasty conclusion that their dust-colored hide is a 
protective coloration with reference to a background of sand. 
Densely forested regions, such as certain areas of West Africa, 
are likewise without lions, which also in India have left the 
jungles to- the tiger. 
The grazers have everywhere been the lion’s principal re- 
source, but no wart hog, daman, or other small animal is re- 
fused when it comes handy; and any lion, apparently, will 
gorge carrion, even if full of maggots, or even when it is the 
carcass of another lion. Laziness is one of this beast’s most 
prominent traits, and to this may be due his willingness to eat 
carrion, and also the fact that he rarely kills except for food, 
not manifesting that Berserker-like blood thirst which leads 
a puma, leopard, or weasel to slay uselessly when opportunity 
occurs. His apparent cowardice may often be really indolence. 
I 113 
