LION. 
211 
or three days. This is not the case, however, with 
respect to drink : as his constitution is naturally 
hot, he is impatient of thirst; and in the interior 
parts, amidst the scorched and desolate deserts of 
Zaara, or Biledulgerid, where rivers and fountains 
are denied, he lives in a perpetual fever, which oc- 
casions a sort of madness fatal to every animal he 
meets with. The author of the (Economy of Na- 
ture gives a wonderful proof of the instinct of these 
animals in those unwatered tracts. There the peli- 
can makes her nest ; and in order to cool her young 
ones, and accustom them to an element they must 
afterwards be conversant in, brings from afar, in her 
great gular pouch, sufficient water to fill the nest. 
The lion and other wild beasts approach and quench 
their thirst, yet never injure the unfledged birds, as 
if conscious that their destruction would immediately 
put a stop to their grateful supplies. 
The lion produces but once a year. With re- 
spect to the time of gestation, naturalists have been 
divided; some asserting that the lioness goes with 
young six months, and others but two. The time 
also of their growth and their age has till lately 
been left in obscurity ; some maintaining that in 
three years they arrive at their full size, while 
others give them a longer period to acquire their 
full growth. Buffon tells us that they live but 
twenty or twenty-two years at most : others make 
their lives even of shorter duration. All these 
doubts, however, are now reduced to certainty, since 
several of these animals have been bred in the. 
p 2 
