92 
WILD ANIMALS. 
flesh, is cut in pieces, and boiled by the sultan in person. 
All the grease is preserved as valuable magic medicine, 
the tail and paws are hung over his doorway, and the 
skin, skilfully pegged out in the sun to dry, is pre- 
pared for the sultan's wear, as no one else dare use it. 
The colour of a young male lion was a pale ochre, with 
distinct dark spots on his hind-legs. The lynx is even 
more highly prized than the lion, though only the size 
of, and a little heavier than, an English fox, with a 
stumpy, short, curled-back dog-tail, and tips of hair to 
his black ears. He has immense, powerful, thickly- 
formed little arms, great length of body, and is said 
by the natives to kill even the lion and buffalo. This 
I believe, for he gives one the idea of bull-dog courage. 
He is said to watch his prey from a tree. The colour 
of the lynx is a dusty red, indistinctly spotted ; a per- 
fect cat's head ; white round the eyes and underneath 
the body. The ceremony observed on the arrival of 
either a lion or lynx is curious : — The sultan, sultana, 
and the sultan's wife next in rank, sit on stools placed 
in the open air, with the dead animal in front of them, 
the crowd all round, squatted or standing. A small 
lump of serpent-dung is made into a paste with water 
upon a stone. Spots of this white ointment are placed 
by the sultan's own hands upon the forehead, chest, 
tips of shoulders, instep, and palms of hands of himself 
and the two wives, and drums and dancing continue 
afterwards for some hours. The serpent-dung is sup- 
posed to have the charm of bringing plenty, or " bur- 
kut," to a house, because it gives many young. No one 
but kings may make use of it. 
Vultures always hover where a dead body is thrown 
out of the village into the grass. This did not prevent 
