36 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
once-uninhabited plains, this practice 
brought them into conflict with the white 
colonists or native herdsmen armed with 
weapons of precision, before whom they 
rapidly succumbed. 
To-day lions are still to be found 
wherever game exists in any quantity, and 
their numbers will be in proportion to those 
of the wild animals on which they prey. 
The indefinite increase of lions must 
be checked by some unknown law of 
nature, otherwise they would have be- 
A FOSTER-MOTHER 
This is a remarkable photograph of a setter suckling three lion cubs which 
had lost their mother. It is reproduced here by permission of the Editor ‘ ess 
of the Irish Field 
come so numerous in the sparsely inhabited or 
altogether uninhabited parts of Africa, that they 
would first have exterminated all the game on 
which they had been wont to prey, and would 
then have had to starve or to have eaten one 
another. But such a state of things has never been 
known to occur; and whenever Europeans have 
entered a previously unexplored and uninhabited 
tract of country in Africa, and have found it 
teeming with buffaloes, zebras, and antelopes, 
they have always found lions in such districts 
very plentiful indeed, but never in such numbers 
as to seriously diminish the abundance of the 
game upon which they depended for food. 
By permission of Herr Carl Hagenoek) [Hamburg 
A PERFORMING LION 
Lions, it would seem, are capable of being taught almost anything, 
even tricycle-riding 
It is easy to understand 
that the increase of a herd 
of herbivorous animals would 
be regulated by the amount 
of the food-supply available, 
as well as constantly checked 
by the attacks of the large 
carnivora, such as _ lions, 
leopards, cheetas, hyzenas, and 
wild dogs; but I have never 
been able to comprehend 
what has kept within bounds 
the inordinate increase’ of 
lions and other carnivorous 
ie ft al animals in countries where 
Phto by G, W. Wilson & Cog Lid.] — fade fot ages past they have had 
LIONESS AND CUB an abundant food-supply, and 
Lion cubs thrive both in Dublin and Amsterdam, but not so well at the Lonaon Zoo at the same time, having 
L 
