106 
A FEW NOTES, HISTORICAL AND HERALDIC, ON THE LION. 
[Nature and Art, April 1, 1867. 
traces of its presence (in the shape of organic 
remains or otherwise) have been lost. 
Let us turn in the first instance to the writers of 
the Old Testament of every period, from the days 
of the patriarch Job to those of the Babylonish 
Captivity, twelve centuries later. Biblical comment- 
ators enumerate five different terms thus applied by 
those writers ; viz., gur, a Lion whelp ; chephir, a 
young Lion just leaving his parents ; ari, a young 
Lion just paired ; sachel, an old Lion ; laish, a 
fierce (or more literally a black) Lion.'" 
Thus we have in Ezekiel, chap. xix. : “ She 
brought up ‘ one of her whelps ’ {gur), and it 
became ‘ a young lion ’ {chephir), and learned to 
devour men.’' 
And in Numbers xxiii. : “ The people shall rise 
up like a great lion, and lift himself up as ‘a 
young lion ’ {ari) ; he shall not lie down till he eat 
of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.” 
And in 2 Sam. xvii. 10 : “ Whose heart is valiant 
as the heart of a lion ” {ari). 
Again in Job iv. 10 : “The roaring of the lion 
{sachet), the voice of the ‘ fierce lion ’ {laish), and 
the teeth of the ‘ young lions ’ ” {arim). 
And in Proverbs xxvi. : “ A slothful man saith 
there is a lion {sachel) in the way, a lion (sachel) is 
in the streets and in chap. xxx. : “ A lion {laish), 
which is the strongest among beasts.” 
Many more passages might be quoted, but the 
above are, we think, sufficient to show, not only 
an intimate acquaintance with the peculiarities of 
the Lion on the part of the sacred writers, but also 
that the similes they used (the points of which are 
partly lost in the translations) were assumed to 
have the force of familiar incidents to those to 
whom their writings were addressed. 
The Assyrian antiquities are an example of the 
same familiarity with the Lion, among ancient 
artists. If due allowance be made for the material 
in which these bas-reliefs were executed, and for the 
1 sheep every day ; 1 ox every month ; 1 horse every two 
months, besides many camels, and a considerable number 
of human lives for each adnlt lion during his career. He 
quotes the probable destruction, under the first three heads 
alone, in two departments of Algeria, at <£27, 000 per 
annum. Neither will these accounts appear exaggerated, 
if we bear in mind the immense loss of human life and the 
frightful slaughter of cattle, in certain districts of India, 
by wild animals (chiefly tigers and wolves), in despite of 
the large sums paid annually as rewards for their destruction. 
# Lions’ whelps (gv/rim) when small are, as the writer can 
vouch, playful and affectionate, though very destructive 
pets. 
When between one and two years old, they begin to kill 
on their own account (chephir), and according to M. Jules 
Gerard, at two years are able to strangle a horse or camel. 
He adds, the destruction they then cause is frightful ; they 
appear to kill in order “ to lea/m to hill.” 
The Lion attains maturity at eight years, and when he 
first pairs appears peculiarly daring (ari). When he gets 
old and unable to pull down game, he frequents the 
neighbourhood of villages and becomes a man-eater 
(sachel). Both in North and South Africa, black lions, 
i.e. those with dark tips to the hairs of the mane, are 
reputed the most fierce. Recent naturalists incline to the 
belief that size, colour, &c. depend on locality and the 
nature of the cover the animal frequents, rather than on 
difference of species. 
fact of the figures being invariably in profile, and 
in outline only, the spirit and fidelity with which 
the lions are rendered will, we think, be allowed by 
every close observer to be remarkable, and to 
contrast strikingly to the disadvantage of many 
“Studies from the Life” of artists of later date.”" 
It must be remembered that in those days 
Clialdsea was not the wilderness it has since 
become, but teemed with a busy population, pos- 
sessing a degree of civilization and refinement, 
such as recent discoveries have at length enabled us 
in some measure to recognize and understand. 
In ancient profane writers, the same fact is ob- 
servable. Let us take the frequent allusions to the 
Lion which are to be met with in the Iliad ; without 
going to extremes, like the learned commentators of 
whom Swift wrote, — 
“ Who view 
In Homer more than Homer knew,” — 
we must allow, with a recent critic, “ that there is 
not a single passage among the many in the Iliad 
relating to the Lion, which contains anything that 
is not true to nature,” and “ that whenever and 
wherever the bard lived, lions must certainly have 
been tolerably plentiful.” 
The writings of Aristotle are another example in 
point ; wherever he may have acquired his infor- 
mation (and this we presume will ever remain an open 
question), his description of the Lion is, save in a 
few details, correct ; and as such, differs widely 
from the absurdities he has recorded of other equally 
common animals, as the camel and the elephant. 
It is frequently assumed that many of his details 
were drawn from the pages of Homer and Hesiod, 
and the resemblance is certainly often very close ; 
we may cite his account of the Lion’s slow and 
deliberate retreat when attacked, turning himself 
about at intervals, to glare on his pursuers, the 
simile used by Homer to describe the retreat of 
Ajax from the Trojan host : — 
“ Qt]pl loiKMQ . 
’EvrpoTTaXi'Copevog bXiyov yovv yovvog apei[3o)v.’’ 
II. xi. 486. 
Aristotle (quoting, however, most probably, from 
Herodotus) asserts the existence of lions in Europe 
in his day. 
As a further example of intimacy with the 
minuter details of the subject, we would instance 
the small claw on the Lion’s tail, the existence of 
which was denied by modern naturalists, until the 
fact was vouched for by Blumenbach ; but which 
appears in the Assyrian remains, and is alluded to 
by Homer. t The writings of Aristotle no doubt 
* The spirit of the originals is, generally speaking, 
altogether lost in the fac-similes of the bas-reliefs which are 
given in popular works on these antiquities. 
f The following remarks on this point, in Mr. F. 
Buckland’s entertaining volumes of “ Curiosities of Natural 
History,” Third Series, may not here be out of place. 
“ In the Proceedings of the Zoological Sooiety, September 
11th, 1832, we find it recorded that a specimen was ex- 
hibited of a claw, obtained from the tip of the tail of a 
young lion from Barbary. It was first seen on the living 
animal by Mr. G. Bennett, who pointed it out to the keeper. 
They secured the beast, and while handling the claw it 
