THE LION CUBS. 31 



THE LION CUBS, 



IN THE ROYAL MENAGERY, TOWER OF LONDON. 



It is a curious phenomenon in the animal world, when we observe the most ferocious beasts of the 

 desert breeding and rearing their young in the contracted and cheerless den of a menagery, in which 

 it might be supposed that their natural propensities would be so much checked and diverted, as to 

 render them callous to those feelings by which they are so powerfully governed in their savage state. 

 Numerous instances, however, have of late occurred, in which propagation has taken place in the 

 menageries of this country amongst animals, not only in their nature of the most ferocious disposi- 

 tion, but even in their species wholly dissimilar. We have already noticed the extraordinary pro- 

 creation of the lion and the tigress. Atkins has at the present time a litter of tiger whelps ; and 

 Wombwell has a she-wolf of the Alps suckling her young, the father of which is a dog of Hud- 

 son's Bay. It must be confessed that these are interesting subjects to the zoologist; for, from some of 

 these discordant unions brought about by the mere caprice and curiosity of man, arises the important 

 question, whether nature, having been thus diverted from her usual track, will allow the new species 

 to perpetuate their kind ; or whether, in her indignation at the trespass on her established laws, she 

 will not visit them with the same punishment as she has hitherto inflicted on all animals and birds 

 ■which are not bred in the regular course of their species. The solution of this question, as far as 

 regards the lion- tigers, will open a vast field for philosophical research, and may give rise to some 

 most curious speculative disquisitions as to the actual origin of many of the animals, which we con- 

 sider at the time to be a distinct species, but which may ultimately be found to be the produce of an 

 accidental, but unnatural union of two animals belonging to the same genus, although wholly dis- 

 similar in the species. 



In the case of the lion cubs, they are not all the produce of one litter, two being whelped at one 

 time, and three at another ; but one of the latter died, and the survivors now form one of the most 

 interesting groups in the Menagery of the Tower. The sire is of the Asiatic breed, the mother of 

 the African ; the lioness is naturally weaker and more timid than the lion ; but such is the strength 

 of her attachment for her young, that for their support she becomes more ferocious and terrible than 

 the lion ; she makes her excursions with more boldness, attacks and destroys without distinction all 

 other animals, and carries them reeking to her cubs, whom she thus instructs to suck their blood and 

 tear their flesh. The length of time the lioness goes with young is variously stated by different writers ; 

 but from recent observation, which has been verified in the present instance, it appears that the 

 period of gestation is rather more than three months and a half. The lioness has several litters in her 

 life, and at each birth produces three or four whelps. The lion cubs, when first born, are rather 

 larger than a half-grown kitten, or about a foot in length, from the back of the head to the root of 

 the tail. Their colour is a mixture of reddish and grey, with a number of small brown bands, which 

 are most distinct on the dorsal spine. The cubs at the Tower exhibited at their birth very faint traces 

 of this banded livery, but it became more distinct as they grew older, until it was finally lost in the 

 deep fawn of the full-grown animal. In this particular, the lion cub bears some resemblance to the 

 9 K 



