THE CAT TRIBE 37 
been almost entirely unmolested by human beings, have had no enemies. Perhaps such a 
state of things does not exist at the present day, but there are many parts of Africa where such 
conditions have existed from time immemorial up to within quite recent years. 
Since lions were once to be found over the greater portion of the vast continent of Africa, 
it is self-evident that these animals are able to accommodate themselves to great variations of 
climate and surroundings; and I myself have met with them, close to the sea, in the hot and 
sultry coastlands of Southeast Africa; on the high plateau of Mashonaland, where at an altitude 
of 6,000 feet above sea-level the winter nights are cold and frosty ; amongst the stony hills to the 
east of the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi; and in the swamps of the Chobi. In the great reed- 
beds of the latter river a certain number of lions appeared to live constantly, preying on buffaloes 
Photo by Fratelli Alinart| [Florence 
: A YOUNG LIONESS 
The sole of the hind foot shows the soft pads on which the Cats noiselessly approach their prey 
and lechwe antelopes. I often heard them roaring at nights in these swamps, and I once saw 
two big male lions wading slowly across an open space between two beds of reeds in water nearly 
a foot in depth. 
Although there are great individual differences in lions as regards size, general colour of 
coat, and more particularly in the length, colour, and profuseness of the mane with which the 
males are adorned, yet as these differences occur in every part of Africa where lions are met 
with, and since constant varieties with one fixed type of mane living by themselves and not inter- 
breeding with other varieties do not exist anywhere, modern zoologists are, I think, now agreed 
that there is only one species of lion, since in any large series of wild lion skins, made in any 
particular district of Africa or Asia, every gradation will be found between the finest-maned 
specimens and those which are destitute of any mane at all. Several local races have, however, 
been recently described by German writers. 
In the hot and steamy coastlands of tropical Africa lions usually have short manes, and 
never, I believe, attain the long silky black manes sometimes met with on the high plateaux 
of the interior. However, there is, I believe, no part of Africa where all or even the majority 
