CARNIVORES IN CAPTIVITY 115 
cleaned in the afternoons, but with this exception the animals 
were left absolutely in peace. After four days I removed for 
a moment the lid, which closed the secret recess, and I then 
saw the two pretty little cubs lying in a nest which the parents 
had lined with hair from their winter fur. Four weeks later 
the father of this litter was found dead in his cage, but the 
mother and young are still living. 
The lions and tigers in my animal-park are kept in the 
carnivore glen, which is not surrounded by a barrier, but is 
separated from the public by a deep trench only. They are 
allowed out into the open air every day without exception dur- 
ing bothsummer and winter. The weather troubles them very 
little, and they range about in the open much more during 
the winter than they do during the summer when it is hot. 
Every morning the sliding door between the cage and the 
glen is opened, so that the animals can go out; they can, 
however, always return to the inner den if they please. 
Nature comes to the help of the animals and makes it possible 
for them to adapt themselves to the climate. We have ob- 
served that the exotic animals, which are not confined in 
winter, grow a thick fur that protects them from the cold. I 
am quite convinced that it is possible to transplant lions to 
any climate whatever, provided they are allowed out into the 
open during spring when they are young. I take it, that such 
lions would eventually grow in winter a woolly covering 
beneath their hair, exactly as is found to be the case with 
Siberian tigers and panthers. : 
Interbreeding occurs between lions, tigers, and other 
kinds of cats, even without the intervention of man, and it is 
therefore not very difficult to carry out experiments in cross- 
breeding. I have bred many young from lions and tigers ; of 
such hybrids, I possess at the present time a male five and a 
half years old, and another male and a female of three and a 
half. The father was a small Somali lion and the mother a 
small tigress, the offspring of the cross being, curiously enough, 
considerably larger than their oe The one male hybrid 
