THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
and hunting during the hours of darkness. They are fond of taking up their 
position during the day on rocky, bush-covered hills, from which a good 
view over the surrounding country may be obtained. Where such hills 
overlook open plains well stocked with game, lions doubtless often observe 
by day the herd of zebras, hartebeests, or other animals which they intend 
to attack as soon as darkness sets in; but they always approach their prey 
against the wind, and at night hunt necessarily chiefly by scent. It has 
often been observed that antelopes and zebras pay little attention to lions 
when they see them in the daytime as long as they do not scent them. 
On the very instant, however, that they get wind of such dangerous 
neighbours they dash off in wild alarm. When several lions are hunting 
together, one or more of the party will sometimes take up a position 
down wind of a herd of game, whilst the others deliberately go round to 
windward and give the animals their scent, which at once leads to a 
panic-stricken rush in the direction of the concealed lions, one or other of 
which will then probably be able to secure a victim. 
I have myself known a lion to kill a young elephant; and there is some 
evidence as to a party of lions occasionally attacking good-sized elephant 
cows; but such incidents are probably excessively rare, and, speaking 
generally, elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotami may be said to be 
immune from the attacks of these formidable carnivora. But nothing 
else, from a buffalo to a tortoise, is safe from their attentions. Forty years 
ago, when buffaloes were enormously plentiful throughout all the wooded 
regions of South Africa, between the Limpopo and the Zambesi, very 
large numbers of these powerful animals were annually killed by lions. 
In some parts of the country, indeed, buffaloes certainly formed the chief 
food of the lions living in the same districts. Giraffes are also sometimes 
killed by lions, but not very often, I think, probably because they must 
not only be awkward animals to pull down, but also because, as a rule, 
they live in very dry, waterless tracts of country into which lions do not 
often penetrate. Zebras have always formed a favourite food of the lion. 
In the first half of the nineteenth century quaggas were very numerous 
on all the open plains, and karroos of the Cape Colony and the Orange Free 
State, and in the latter territory, as well as in the Western Transvaal and 
Bechuanaland, Burchell’s zebras were also very plentiful; and in all 
these territories these two species of zebra undoubtedly formed the 
principal food of the lions living in the same countries, which were so 
numerous that the pioneer missionary, Robert Moffat, has recorded the 
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