20 WILD ANIMALS. 



lair, there to await another victim, and the curious fact, which 

 seems corroborated by various travellers, is that at times he will 

 go carefully step by step over the ground, measuring it appa- 

 rently so as not again to make such a miscalculation of the 

 distance. At other times he appears to attack his prey by 

 seizing the animal by the flank, or hind-leg, or the throat below the 

 jaw. Sir W. 0. Harris says : " The weight of the hon's body, as 

 compared with its size, is very remarkable, and is accounted for by 

 the singular density of the muscles, and the compactness of the 

 principal bones ; which latter, like the teeth of the hippopotamus, 

 will produce fire with steel. The force with which he miist alight 

 after a bound of fifteen or twenty feet is, therefore, sufficiently 

 obvious, and his massy paw will batter in the skull of an ox 

 quite as effectually as if a sledge-hammer had been employed." 



His strength is undoubtedly very great, and Thunberg states 

 that he will not only attack an ox of the largest size, but will very 

 nimbly throw it over his shoulder, and leap over a fence four feet 

 high with it, although at the same time the ox's legs hang 

 dangling on the ground. Montgomery Martin relates that a 

 young lion has been known to carry a good-sized horse a mile 

 from the spot where he 'killed him. Mr, Selous, however, 

 says : "I have never met with an instance of a lion carrying an 

 animal that it has killed, and, as far as I know, their invariable 

 practice is to drag the carcase along the ground, holding it the 

 while by the back of the neck. This they do with even the 

 smallest antelope, such as impala ; and I do not think the South 

 African lion would be capable of lifting such a heavy beast as a 

 bullock from the ground, as the North African species is said to 

 do. much less of springing over a high fence with one." 



Mr, 0, J, Andersson remarks : " The quantity of flesh that a 

 lion in a wild state devours at a meal is something enormous. On 

 more than one occasion I have known him to dispatch the greater 

 part of a zebra in the course of a night." Mr. Moffatt also seems 

 struck with the same thing, for in describing an attack made on 

 his party by a lion, on which occasion it not only carried off a 

 cow, but ate up the poor beast within gunshot of the bivouac fire, 

 he writes : " I had often heard how much a large hungry lion 



