covered with oak forest, or with pretty thick brushwood of hawthorn, wild 
pear, and other bushes, and contain very extensive vineyards. Dashtiarjan 
is thus a perfect paradise for swine, and they increase and multiply accordingly, 
so that the lions have plenty to eat, varying the monotony of constant pork 
with an occasional ibex, or with a calf from the herds which graze in the valley. 
Like most of the larger cats, lions are essentially nocturnal in their habits, 
and they are thus frequently only met with by chance in districts where, from 
the abundance of their tracks and from their nocturnal roarings, they are 
known to be plentiful. During the daytime they are accustomed to lie asleep 
LION CUBS AND THEIR HABITS. 
THE STORY OF THE LION. 67 
information of their northern limits, but Captain Pierson, who spent many 
years in the country between Tehran and Baghdad, says that he never heard 
of lions in the oak forest west of Karmanshah. It is the acorns o-f this same 
oak forest which feed the wild pigs whose presence tempts the lion into the 
mountains of Fars. The little valley of Dashtiarjan, thirty-five miles t west 
of Shiraz, is notorious for the number of lions found in its vicinity. Part 
of the valley is occupied by a fresh-water lake, on the edges of which are 
extensive beds of reeds; the surrounding hills, which rise four thousand feet 
above the valley, itself six thousand five hundred feet above the sea, are 
