﻿166 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



through Thessaly as far south as the Gulf of Lepanto and the Isthmus of Corinth, having 

 as its western boundary the River Potamo and the Pindus Mountains. 



The next mention of the European Lion we find in Xenophon's ■ Treatise on Hunting,' 

 which he composed on his banishment from Athens, after he had exchanged the court and 

 the camp for the pleasures of gardening and hunting, in his splendid retreat in Lace- 

 dsemon, about the year 380 B.C. 1 — " Now, Lions, Pardaleis, Lynxes, Panthers, Bears, and 

 the like beasts, are caught in foreign countries in the neighbourhood of Mount Pangaeum 

 and Mount Cissus, which is beyond Macedonia, and in the Mysian Olympus, and in 

 Pindus, and in Nyse that is above Syria, and in other mountains that are able to support 

 such animals." Mount Pangaeum is situated near the sources of the Nestus, not far from 

 the range of Rhodope (of the Balkans), Cissus is close to Thessalonica, and therefore this 

 passage corroborates strongly the statement given by Llerodotus as to the range of the 

 animal, the only difference being that Xenophon states that it inhabited the Despoto Dagh 

 Mountains of Roumelia, the eastern watershed of the Nestus, instead of its being restricted 

 to the western bank of that river. Baron Cuvier, 2 indeed, and the late Right- Honorable 

 Sir George Cornewall Lewis 3 agree in refusing historical value to this passage, because 

 other localities in Asia are mentioned, believing that all these animals were not found in 

 any one of these localities. But the fact that the Lion lived in that area, both before and after 

 Xenophon 's time, coupled with the fact that the Panther, Lynx, and Bear ranged through 

 Europe in company in Post-glacial times, renders it very probable that he was scien- 

 tifically accurate when he advised their capture in that district, by placing poisoned food 

 near their drinking places. The Lynx and Bear still live in the same neighbourhood, and 

 the Panther still remains in Asia Minor, bereft of his congener the Lion. 



The historical value of the account of the range of the Lion in Europe given by 

 Herodotus and Xenophon is corroborated by the testimony of the great father of natural 

 history, Aristotle, who flourished some fifty years after the time of the latter writer, and 

 who, being a native of Stagira, lived in the very district said to have been inhabited by 

 the Lion. He describes its European range very nearly in the same words as those used 

 by Herodotus ; but in the hundred and fifty years that elapsed between their dates the 

 hunter and the husbandman had made great inroads on the last foothold of the Lion in 

 Europe. The " 7roXAol \eovng" " the many Lions," spoken of by the one had dwindled 



1 EevoQwvtoq KwriytTiKOQ. Cap. XI, 1. Aeovtzq <)£, napSaXeiQ, Xvjkeq, vavOripec, apuroi kol 

 raXXa ocrffa Igtl Totavra Oripia aXiVicerat iv &vaiQ ^wpaig Trspl to Hayyaiov opog ical rbv Kittov 

 to vtrep Trie MaKe^oviag, Tab" iv tw 'OXifXTTio rw Mi/trui) Kai iv IIivc^, to. 8' iv Trj Nu^ Trj (nrip 

 Trie ^vp'iag Kai irpbg toIq aXXoig opecrt, oaa o'ia T iaTi Tpi<j>uv TOiavTa. 



2 ' Oss. Foss.,' 3e edit., 4to., t. iv, p. 425. 



3 'Notes and Queries,' second series, viii, 1895, "Lions in Greece." We are indebted for several of 

 the references to classical works to the learning of this eminent critic. 



