96 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



I know no other mammal, ungulate or carnivore, that has any 

 pattern resembling this ; indeed, if one were to photograph the 

 pattern in question and a few inches of the skin surrounding it, 

 and be told that it came from the back of a mammal one could not 

 doubt that it was a hall-mark of the King of Beasts. It would 

 not produce that thrill of intense interest which we felt at the 

 meeting on 7th May, 1901, at the Zoological Society of London, 

 when from a water colour sketch and three pieces of skin taken 

 from the body of a hitherto unknown mammal, Sir Harry Johnston 

 proceeded to reconstruct the Okapi, at first dubbed knight, as a 

 member of the Equidse, but later promoted downwards to the 

 Girafndae. But one could do no less, with some knowledge of 

 the hair of mammals, than reconstruct from such a photograph a 

 large, powerful and ferocious carnivore, and where but in the lion 

 can the greatest example of those attributes be found ? I say 

 this advisedly, for this remarkable pattern of the lion's back is as 

 much a stamp of his moral or mental quality as the Inguinal Pedo- 

 meter is of the locomotive role m life of equus caballus. 



I hear the sharp voice of the critic here, " Come, come, you 

 may have shown reason for the latter, but how on earth do mental 

 and moral qualities of an animal come into your scheme ? " Well, 

 we have in this pattern of the lion's back to deal with a unique 

 phenomenon for the production of which neither pressure, nor 

 friction, nor gravitation, nor underlying muscular traction will 

 account. Nevertheless, it is a result of muscular action of a rare 

 kind. Who does not know the striking appearance of the hair 

 along the centre of a short-haired dog when he bristles up with 

 rage or fear, or both combined, at tbe sight of a foe ? This common 

 event has its own mechanical cause, though it is one strictly governed 

 by the mental and moral qualities of the dog, and we see the vivid 

 proof before us of the action of the minute arrectores pili, in this 

 particular region of the dog. It is precisely in the same situation 

 that the special pattern of the lion's hair is found. It is not for 

 nothing that Nature has provided every tiny hair of the mammalian 

 skin with that insignificant little band of muscle which lies within 

 the hair-pit, and is attached to the sloping hair on its posterior side, 

 and thus when it contracts serves to drag it into an erect position. 

 I refrain from discussing what may be held to be the survival value, 

 under the theory of selection, of this power of the arrectores pili 

 to confer on the possessor an added appearance of ferocity and 

 general f rightfulness. This is quite a likely explanation of the 

 presence of these little muscles. Be that as it may the modus 

 operandi of the reversed hair which has become fixed on the lion's 



