8 The Carnivora. 
to spear the lion, upon which he turned from Mebalwe and 
seized this fresh foe by the shoulder. At that moment the 
bullets the beast had received took effect, and he fell down 
dead. The whole was the work of a few moments, and must 
have been his paroxysm of dying rage. In order to take the 
charm from him, the Bakatla on the following day made a 
huge bonfire over the carcase, which was declared to be the 
largest ever seen. Besides scrunching the bone into splinters, 
eleven of his teeth had penetrated the upper part of my arm.” 
The consequence of this, perhaps, foolhardy encounter with 
some half dozen lions by men armed with ridiculously un- 
trustworthy weapons, was, so far as Livingstone himself was 
concerned, “only the inconvenience of a false joint” in his 
limb. 
The varieties of the lion, black-maned and tawny, and those 
without any mane at all, are probably due to local conditions, 
the difference in any case being insufficient for establishing 
a specific distinction. Livingstone found lions, both very old 
and also in the prime of life, totally destitute of the mane. 
Besides the difference of colour some individuals have pretty 
distinct brown spots, principally on the belly and inside the 
thighs, which are quite conspicuous on all the cubs. 
The ravages of lions among the flocks of the natives in 
Africa seem to be almost as great as the depredations of the 
tiger in India, although they are certainly much less given 
to man eating, and that only when old and incapable of 
hunting. It has been said, on good authority, that a lion in 
Algeria may be considered to destroy about £200 worth of 
camels, horses, and oxen, in the course of a year, and if he 
lives to the age of thirty years the brute will have cost the 
community no less than £6,000! Pitfalls and ambuscades, 
therefore, are constructed with considerable skill to put an 
end to his ravages, and miserable old guns, little better than 
gaspipes with a touch hole drilled in them, are brought into 
requisition, with, however, not much effect upon the marauders. 
Strictly carnivorous as they are, these great cats appear to 
