THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
since. Long ago lions were exterminated from Afghanistan, 
Beluchistan, and northern Persia. A century ago they were more 
sae ates) OF less prevalent in northwestern India, but now 
none remain save a few in the Gheer, a wooded hilly 
tract of Kattiawar, where they are “to some extent preserved 
by the Nawabs of Joonaghoor.” “* In Persia they survive 
only in Farsistan, where the marshes about Niris Lake afford 
shelter, and the hosts of pigs feeding on the acorns of the oak 
forests furnish subsistence. Similar conditions enable a few 
lions to maintain themselves along the lower Euphrates and 
Tigris; but they were long ago exterminated from all Asia 
Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Algeria. From Abyssinia, 
and the southern Sahara southward to the Orange River, lions 
still exist except in the most populous districts, and in some 
places are very numerous. Very few skins now reach the Lon- 
don fur-market, where good specimens, suitable for rugs, 
brought in 1905 from $500 to $1000. 
There seems never to have been more than one species, nor, 
in spite of the former belief in the ‘‘maneless lions of Guzerat”’ 
and the ‘‘black-maned” ones of other places, is any variety 
well localized. Lions with full manes have been shot in India, 
as well as those with hardly any; and “out of fifty male lion- 
skins scarcely two will be found alike in color and length of 
mane.” So says Selous, in whose books ¥° will be found more 
that is worth reading about this beast than anywhere else. 
A lion of large size measures about nine and a half feet from the nose to 
the tip of the tail, which is about three feet long; stands three and a half 
feet high at the shoulders; and weighs about five hundred pounds. Most 
specimens, however, fall far short of these figures; and the largest exam- 
pies have come from South Africa. The uniform pale tawny or yellowish 
gray of its coat is both adaptive to the animal’s customary surroundings 
and a mark of the antiquity of its race, for the spots which reappear in each 
young kitten are regarded as outgrown markings, as in the case of the puma 
and other concolorous cats. A completely black lion has not, so far as I 
know, been recorded; but now and then very dark ones are seen, from 
122 
