26 WILD ANIMALS. 



Sir W. C. Harris, writing in 1841 and speaking of the lion, 

 observes : " Those who have seen the monarch of the forest in crip- 

 pling captivity only, immured in a cage barely double his own length, 

 with his sinews relaxed by confinement, have seen but the shadow 

 of that animal which "clears the desert with his rolling eye." 

 This may be true of small menageries, but it is open to question 

 whether in large, airy, clean dens, regular food, and careful atten- 

 tion, some animals do not, under such conditions, improve in 

 personal appearance. They are no doubt to some extent tame 

 and enervated, and may have some faculties blunted or lost that 

 in their wild state would have to be constantly exercised. " I 

 have never seen the skin of the wild lion with a mane equal in length 

 to that attained by the greater part of the lions we see in mena- 

 geries," writes Mr. Selous. "All wild lions with a full mane have 

 two small tufts of hair, one at the elbows and the other in the 

 armpit ; but I never yet saw one with any long hair along the 

 belly, between the forearm and the flank, as may be seen in almost 

 all menagerie lions in this country. I do not say that cases do 

 not occur of wild lions becoming equally hairy, but they must be 

 very rare, otherwise I should have met with some amongst the 

 large number of skins I have seen. The coat of the wild lion is 

 very short and close, whilst the lions kept in this country become 

 very much longer, and usually of a redder colour, than the pale 

 yjellow or silvery grey hue of the wild animal. I could pick out 

 the skin of a menagerie lion from amongst a hundred wild ones. 

 Climate and regular feeding must, I think, have a good deal to do 

 with the luxuriant growth of mane almost invariably to be ob- 

 served in lions in confinement. . . . Nothing can be more disap- 

 pointing to the youthful sportsman fresh from England and 

 accustomed to the full fiowing manes of the lions in the gardens 

 of the Zoological Society, or the representations of the wild 

 animals to be seen in works of natural history or picture-books, 

 than to shoot him in his native haunts and find him almost desti- 

 tute of mane, for after all, -what is a lion without a mane but 

 the shadow of that noble beast one has mentally pictured to 

 oneself?" 



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