NOTES ON THE LION (_continued_)
Depredations of lions in Mashunaland--Sad death of Mr. Teale--Great
slaughter of pigs by a lioness--Mode of entering a cattle
kraal--Method of killing prey--Sharpness of lion's claws--Mode of
seizing a horse in motion--Lion chasing koodoos--Lions lying in
wait for oxen--How a lion charges--Black Jantje's story--Numbing
effect of lion's bite--Cruelty in nature--Appearance of wild
lions--Colour of eyes--Lions at bay--A crouching lion--A lucky
shot--The cat a lion in miniature--A danger signal--Social habits
of lions--Troops of lions--Lions on the Mababi plain--Difference
between cubs of one litter--Individual differences in lions--Great
variation in the development of the mane--Lion probably first
evolved in a cold climate--Still found in Europe in the time of
Herodotus--Effect of cold on growth of lion's mane.
When a previously uninhabited piece of country is invaded and settled
up by a tribe of natives or by Europeans, lions are always very
troublesome, as they look upon all the newly introduced domestic
animals as some new species of game specially brought into the country
for their benefit.
For the first few months after Mr. Rhodes's pioneers entered
Mashunaland in 1890, I kept as accurate an account as I could of the
number of horses, donkeys, oxen, sheep, goats, and pigs that were
killed by lions, and it soon amounted to more than two hundred. During
the same time two white men were killed and several others severely
injured by lions. The saddest case was that of a young man named Teale,
who had come to Mashunaland in the hope of making his fortune by
market-gardening. He was outspanned one night near a native village not
far from Umtali, where he had gone to buy grain. His four oxen were
tied to the yokes, and he with his native driver was sleeping on the
ground beneath his two-wheeled cart, when he was seized and carried off
by a lion. What the lion did not eat of him, the hyænas probably got,
as nothing was ever found but his head and one foot with the boot still
on it.
A rather curious incident happened the following year at a farm on
the Hanyani river about forty miles from Salisbury. The owner of the
farm--from whom I heard this story (which was fully corroborated by
his native servants)--was breeding pigs, and had a large number of
these animals in a series of pens, separated from one another by low
partitions, but all under one thatched roof. One night a lioness
managed to force her way into the piggery between two poles, and after
having satisfied her hunger, was apparently unable to find her way out
again, and either became angry or frightened, or else must have been
overcome with an almost insatiable lust for killing. At any rate, she
wandered backwards and forwards through the pens and killed almost all
the pigs, over a hundred altogether, each one with a bite in the head
or the back of the neck. She had only eaten portions of two young pigs.
She managed to effect her escape before daylight, but returned the
following night, and was shot by a set gun. I saw her skull, which was
that of a full-grown lioness with good teeth.
There appears to be a considerable difference of opinion as to the
means usually adopted by lions to effect an entrance by night into a
cattle kraal or a camp surrounded by a fence. They are often said to
leap boldly over high fences and stockades. In my own experience I
have not known them do this. They will walk through any opening in
an enclosure, but in the absence of such a means of ingress, I have
always found that they got inside by creeping through the fence, even
when it was low and very thick and thorny. I have known a lion to walk
round and round a stockaded cattle kraal, and at last force its way
in by pressing two poles apart and squeezing through the opening thus
made. Should lions, however, be disturbed and suddenly fired at whilst
feeding on a bullock which they have killed inside an enclosure, they
will almost always jump over the fence in their hurry to escape.
I have never seen any evidence of a lion's killing its prey by striking
it a heavy blow with one of its paws, and I believe that it always
endeavours to kill by biting, and only uses its claws for holding or
pulling an animal to its mouth. I have seen both a lion and a lioness
bayed by dogs repeatedly throw out their fore-paws like lightning
when one of these latter came near them; but the movement was not in
the nature of a blow, but rather an attempt to hook one of the dogs
in their claws and draw it to them. Lions, I think, must often lose
their prey through the very sharpness of their claws, which cut like
knives through the skin and flesh of a heavy animal in motion. I have
known several instances of a lion overtaking a horse that had only had
a short start. In such a case a lion will not land with a flying leap
right on to a horse's back. It gallops close along the ground until it
is almost under the horse's tail, and then, rearing itself up on its
hind-legs, seizes it on either flank, endeavouring to hold it with the
protruded claws of its great fore-paws. But almost invariably in such
a case it fails to stop a galloping horse, its claws simply cutting
great gashes through skin and flesh. I once saw a lion chasing four
koodoos in broad daylight, though on a cold cloudy morning. It was
galloping after them flat along the ground as hard as it could go,
and looked like an enormous mastiff, especially as, though a male,
it had but little mane. On another occasion, late one evening, I saw
a lion and two lionesses lying in wait for some cattle of mine which
were feeding towards them. Every now and then one or other of the lions
would raise its head for a moment above the grass to see that the oxen
were still coming on, lowering it again after one quick look. But for
my intervention, these lions would probably have lain quite still until
one or other of the oxen had fed close up to them, when they would
have seized it by the head before it had time to turn. As lions nearly
always hunt by scent and by night, they no doubt come up wind and
approach as near as possible to a herd of game before making an attack,
and probably often lie quite still until some animal feeds right on to
them. In a country where game is plentiful, one would imagine that on
a dark night lions must have but little trouble in securing food, and
this is no doubt the case, as these carnivora become excessively fat
wherever game is really plentiful.
When a lion charges, it does not come on in great leaps, nor does it
strike its adversary a crushing blow with its paw. It comes along
close to the ground like a great dog and bites, often so low that
its forefeet can hardly be off the ground. Two Boer hunters of my
acquaintance were both of them first bitten in the thigh. Shortly after
the opening up of Mashunaland, too, an Englishman and a Dane were both
seized in the same way by charging lions when hunting near the Pungwe
river, in Portuguese East Africa, the latter dying from his wounds. In
1877 an Englishman was charged by an unwounded lion in Mashunaland and
severely bitten in the groin; and in the following year, in the same
locality, an old Hottentot servant of mine was badly bitten in the
small of the back when running away from a charging lion which he had
previously wounded. All these wounds were so low down that they must
have been inflicted when the lion's forefeet were on the ground. On the
other hand, many cases are on record of men standing facing charging
lions being seized by the left forearm and sometimes by the shoulder.
I do not remember to have heard of a case of a man being bitten in the
head in a frontal charge, but one of my old servants, "Black Jantje,"
described to me very minutely the way in which he saw from a distance
of only a few yards a Bushman killed by a wounded lion. When the lion
charged every one ran, and just as "Black Jantje" reached a small
tree, it dashed past him and the next instant caught up to a Bushman.
It appeared, Jantje told me, to rear itself up, and placing a forepaw
on each shoulder, gave the unfortunate savage a bite in the head.
There were no wounds on the man's shoulders, but his skull was bitten
through, and he was dashed to the ground with such violence that the
skin was knocked off both his knees. The wounded lion made no further
attack, but walking slowly away to the foot of a neighbouring tree, lay
down and presently died within a few yards of its dead enemy. Two cases
have come within my experience of lions charging home, and after having
thrown their adversaries to the ground with one severe bite, leaving
them without further molestation. I have known personally a number
of men who had been mauled by lions. Every one of them was bitten,
not struck by the lion's paw. Indeed, most of them were absolutely
untouched by the lion's claws.
I once made the acquaintance of a fine old Boer hunter with whom I
subsequently became very intimate, just after he had been very severely
mauled by a lion. On asking him if he had felt much pain when the
lion was biting him--he had eleven deep tooth wounds in the one thigh,
besides others in the left arm and hand, and described the lion as
having "chewed" him--he answered, "Ja, ik at byung sair gekrij" ("Yes,
I felt much pain"); and some Kafirs have also told me that they have
suffered much when being bitten by lions. It is possible that old
Petrus Jacobs and my Kafir informants did really feel some pain at
the time when they were being bitten, but in the case of Europeans,
at any rate, who probably possess very highly-strung nervous systems,
all the first-hand evidence I have been able to gather goes to prove
that the bite of a lion or a tiger is practically painless. I imagine
that the reason of this is, that the tremendous energy exerted by a
lion in biting is equivalent to a heavy blow, which produces such a
shock to the nervous system that all sensation is for the time being
deadened, as it would be by a heavy blow from a sledge-hammer. I do not
think that any kind of wounds from either blows or bullets or bites
are likely to give any appreciable pain if inflicted swiftly when the
blood is up; but they become painful enough very soon afterwards. When
animals are killed quickly by lions, they too probably suffer very
little, if at all, but no one who has listened, as I have done, to the
bellowing of an ox or a buffalo being killed by inches could possibly
say that such an animal's sufferings were not very great. I once had a
fine stallion donkey killed by a hyæna within a short distance of my
bivouac. It had first been seized between the hind-legs by its foul
assailant, and its screams were perfectly heart-rending, and haunted
me for a long time afterwards. My Kafirs and I ran to the poor brute's
assistance at once, but were too late to save it, as a great hole had
been torn in its belly, out of which half its entrails were hanging.
No; it is useless for the scientist or the divine to tell an old hunter
that there is no cruelty in nature, because the man who has spent many
years of his life in a wild country knows by actual experience that
such an assertion is not true. But let me return to my lions.
In appearance a full-maned, well-proportioned lion lying in peaceful
repose in a European menagerie, gazing placidly and thoughtfully out
of sleepy, brownish yellow eyes at the human crowd beyond the bars of
its cage, is a truly dignified and majestic-looking animal; and if a
fine specimen of a wild lion could be viewed at close quarters and at
a moment when it was lying or standing with its massive mane-encircled
head well raised, content with itself and all the world, after a good
meal, and entirely unconscious of danger, it also would doubtless
look both dignified and majestic, though I doubt if it could ever
look quite so reposeful as the typical lion of the picture-books; for
although wild lions are sometimes caught fast asleep, they are usually
alert and watchful. I have spoken of the eyes of lions that have grown
up in captivity as being brownish in colour and somewhat sleepy in
expression, and that is the impression I have received from looking
at the lions in the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park. On the other
hand, I remember the colour of the eyes of wild lions as being of a
flaming yellow, which retains its fierce brilliancy for many hours
after death. Should a lion be shot through the loins and injured in
such a way that, its hind-quarters being paralysed, it can be closely
approached without danger, its fierce eyes seem ablaze with bright
yellow flame, and give complete expression to the awful fury by which
it is possessed. It is worth mentioning, I think, that when visiting
the Zoological Gardens at Clifton, a couple of years ago, I noticed
that the eyes of the lions and tigers there were in most cases of a
flaming yellow, as they are, according to my experience, in wild lions.
In some of them, however, the eyes were brownish and sleepy-looking.
When walking, wild lions hold the head rather low, lower than the line
of the back, and although, when suddenly encountered, they will raise
it for a moment to take a look at the intruder, they will soon lower
it again and either trot away with a low growl or else stand watching.
A wild lion looks his best and his worst, intensely savage but not at
all majestic, when standing at bay. I have the pictures of four male
lions, that I had chased on horseback and brought to bay, very vividly
impressed on my memory. One was wounded, though only slightly, the
other three as yet untouched. They all stood fairly facing me, their
heads held well down below their mane-crowned shoulders, their fierce
yellow eyes gleaming, and their ears laid flat, like the ears of an
angry cat or leopard. All the time they stood at bay they kept up a
constant succession of loud, rumbling growls and flicked their tails
continually from side to side, throwing them suddenly into the air
before charging with louder, hoarser growls.
In one respect the behaviour of these four angry lions was quite
different from that of an angry cat or leopard, or even tiger. There
was no suspicion of snarling about them. Their mouths were held
slightly open, but instead of the upper lip being drawn up so as to
expose the upper canine teeth, it was drawn down so as to completely
cover them. They stood thus with their mouths held slightly open,
growling savagely and twitching their tails from side to side, until
two of them charged before I fired at them, and the other two I fired
at and killed before they could make up their minds to charge. Now this
abstention from all suspicion of snarling which I remember so well in
the case of four different lions when driven to bay, and the fact that
I do not carry in my mind the picture of any lion snarling that I have
ever shot, makes me wonder whether it is correct to depict an angry
lion as snarling like an angry cat or leopard. This is a small matter,
no doubt, but one which I think it is worth while inquiring into, as if
an angry lion really does not snarl, it differs in this respect from
all other members of the cat tribe.
I once galloped almost on to a lion lying flat on the ground in grass
only about a foot in height before I saw it. When I at last made it
out, I was directly in front of, and probably less than twenty yards
away from it. As I pulled my horse in, this lion had its head pressed
down on its outstretched paws and its eyes were fixed upon me. Had I
ridden by, it would certainly never have moved until I had got out of
sight. As I raised my rifle and looked down the barrel to align the
sights upon its head, I saw the black tuft of hair at the end of its
tail flicked lightly from side to side, and the fore-paws, that had
been stretched out straight beyond its nose, drawn slowly under its
breast, without its head or body being perceptibly raised. I knew the
lion was on the very point of charging, but my horse kept breathing
hard and I could not get my sight steadily fixed below its eyes.
Then, just as I saw the crouching beast's hind-quarters quivering, or
rather moving gently from side to side, I fired, and luckily my bullet
struck it just between the eyes, and crashing into its brain, killed
it instantly, so that it never moved, but still lay crouching on the
ground, struck dead at the very last moment before starting on its
charge. Since that time I have on several occasions watched a cat when
stalking a bird go through every movement made by that lion--the same
apparently involuntary twitching of just the end of the tail, the
same drawing-in of the fore-paws beneath the chest, and then the wavy
movement of the loins just before the final rush. As lions are very
nocturnal in their habits and usually hunt by night, it is, of course,
very unusual to see them approach and kill their prey, but from the
above related experience I imagine that every movement made by a lion
in approaching and finally making a rush upon an antelope or zebra is
exactly represented in miniature by a cat stalking a bird or rabbit.
It is as well to remember that if a lion, after standing for a short
time growling at you and whisking its tail backwards and forwards round
its hind-legs, suddenly stiffens it and throws it straight into the
air at right angles to the line of its back two or three times, it is
a danger-signal and means charging. A lion may often charge without
throwing its tail straight up, but I believe that it will never throw
its tail up without charging.
PLATE SHOWING DIFFERENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MANE IN LIONS
INHABITING A COMPARATIVELY SMALL AREA OF COUNTRY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
The skins from which these figures have been drawn are all in the
possession of the Author, and are all three those of fully adult
animals.
[Illustration: No. 1.--Lion killed on the upper Hanyani river in
Mashunaland in June 1880.]
[Illustration: No. 2.--Lion killed on the Umzingwani river near
Bulawayo in Matabeleland in September 1887.]
[Illustration: No. 3.--Lion killed on the Botletlie river, near the
Makari-kari Salt-pan, in May 1879.]
The African lion appears to be more gregarious than any other of the
Felidae, and the male is certainly addicted to polygamy. Often a
lion or a lioness may live and hunt for a time by itself, and very
old animals are probably always solitary, as an old lion would be
driven away from the females by younger males, and an old female would
probably be badly treated by younger animals of both sexes. Sometimes
two or even three males will hunt together for a time. More often a
male lion may be met with accompanied by from one to four females,
some of which latter may be followed by cubs of different ages and
sizes. A family party consisting of one old male lion, three or four
adult females, and several cubs, some of which may stand almost as
high at the shoulder as their mothers, would constitute what the old
Boer hunters would have called "en trop leeuws" (a troop of lions). In
parts of Africa where game is, or was, very abundant, there are many
authentic records of over twenty lions having been seen together. In
his article on "The Lion," published in the Badminton Library Series,
Mr. F. J. Jackson, C.B., has noted the fact that on August 7, 1890,
he and Dr. Mackinnon came across a troop of twenty-three lions near
Machakos in East Africa. This troop consisted of three male lions with
splendid dark manes, five or six lionesses, and the rest cubs. I have
come to the conclusion that such large assemblages of lions as this, in
which there are several full-grown males, are, in all probability, only
of a very temporary nature, the chance meeting and fraternisation of
several families which, as a rule, live and hunt apart; since I believe
that the passions of love and jealousy would not allow two or more
males to live permanently in the company of lionesses without fighting.
When a troop of lions is met with, in which, besides a full-grown male
and some females and small cubs, there are also one or two good-sized
young males with small manes, I believe that they are the offspring
of the old male and one or other of the adult females, and that they
have lived and hunted with the troop since cubhood. Such young males
are probably not driven away to hunt by themselves until they commence
to aspire to the affections of one of the females of the party. In
1879 I encountered two pairs of male lions hunting in company in the
Mababi country to the north of Lake N'gami. I shot the first pair, and
should certainly have killed both the others had I only had a rifle
and a few cartridges with me when I first saw them, as they were right
out on an open plain from which the grass had been burnt, far away
from the nearest bush, and I was riding the best hunting horse I ever
possessed. The two lions which I shot were large and heavy, apparently
just in their prime, and the other pair also appeared to be full-grown
animals. Now the Masarwa Bushmen living near the Mababi plain--and
these wild people are extraordinarily acute observers--declared that
they knew both these pairs of lions well, and said that each pair were
the cubs of one mother, and had been hunting together since cubhood.
Curiously enough, in the case of both these pairs of lions the two
animals living and hunting together differed from one another very
much. In each case one was of a very dark colour all over, with a dark
mane, whilst the body of the other was of a pale yellow, and it had
scarcely any mane at all. A few days after encountering the second pair
of lions, a friend and myself came upon two lionesses on the same open
plain, both of which we shot. One of these lionesses was on the point
of giving birth to three cubs, which we cut out of her womb. Two of
these cubs were males, and they differed very much one from another
in colour even before birth. One was very dark indeed, owing to the
blackish tint of the tips of the hairs of its little fluffy coat. The
other was of a reddish yellow. The fur of the female cub was also of
a much lighter colour than in the dark male. Now I cannot but adhere
to the opinion which I wrote down in my diary at the time, that these
two male lion cubs would, had they lived, have grown up into animals
differing very much in appearance one from the other. The dark cub
would have become a dark-skinned, dark-maned lion, the lighter coloured
one a yellow lion with probably very little mane.
Commenting upon such a case as the above, Mr. R. Lydekker, in one of
his recently published zoological essays, says that when light- and
dark-maned cubs are met with in the same litter it is due to crossing
between lions of different races. Mr. Lydekker has also stated that
"with regard to the lion, it has now been ascertained that the
black-maned and tawny-maned specimens belong, in most cases at any
rate, to distinct local races."
The objection to this theory is that you cannot classify all African
lions under two heads, the black-maned and the tawny-maned. Dealing
with this subject in 1881, and referring only to the skins of lions
I had seen which had been killed in the country between the Limpopo
and the Zambesi, I wrote as follows: "I cannot see that there is any
reason for supposing that more than one species (of lion) exists, and
as out of fifty lion skins scarcely two will be found exactly alike in
the colour and length of the mane, I think it would be as reasonable
to suppose that there are twenty species as two. The fact is, that
between the animal with hardly a vestige of mane and the far handsomer
but much less common beast with a long flowing black mane every
possible intermediate variety may be found." Since that time I have
seen a great many more skins of lions shot in the country to the south
of the Zambesi, as well as a number from limited areas of country in
East Africa and in Somaliland, and it appears to me that the lions of
these two latter very limited areas show exactly the same variations as
regards colour and profuseness of mane as their congeners in the more
southerly parts of the continent.
I have seen the skins of many lions and lionesses in South Africa,
which seemed to be those of full-sized animals though they may have
been young in years, showing very well-defined red-brown spots on the
legs, flanks, and belly. The old Boer hunters, indeed, had a name for
such lions, "bont pod leeuws" (spotted-footed lions), which some of
them maintained belonged to a distinct species. I once, however, showed
the skins of five lions, which I had recently shot in Mashunaland,
to a well-known Boer hunter. One was that of a large male with a
fine dark mane. This he declared to be the skin of a "swart voer-leif
leeuw" (lion with the front part of the body black); whilst the skin
of a lioness which showed a good many spots on the legs and belly, he
declared to be that of a "bont pod leeuw, de kwai sort" (spotted-footed
lion, the vicious kind). As, however, these two animals were consorting
together when I shot them, I do not believe that they belonged to
different species or even races. I am inclined to think that lions
showing spots on the legs and belly, when adult but still not old,
might very likely lose them in later life.
In regard to wild lions, it may be said, as a general proposition, that
the mane usually grows round the neck and on the chest only, with a
prolongation from the back of the neck to behind the shoulder-blades.
Sometimes large full-grown male lions will be practically maneless.
Occasionally specimens will be met with in which the entire shoulders
as well as the neck will be covered with mane. When writing of lions in
1881, I stated that I had never seen the skin of a wild lion in which
the whole belly was covered with long hair, as is so often the case
with lions in captivity in this country, though I had seen full-maned
wild lions with large tufts of long dark hair on the elbows and in
the flanks. A few years later, however, Lo Bengula, the last chief of
the Matabele, gave me the skin of a lion which had been killed near
the upper course of the Umzingwani river, not far from Bulawayo, with
a very fine mane. In this specimen the tufts of hair in the flanks
were very profuse, almost meeting across the belly, and there were a
few long hairs all over the under parts of the skin. There is also, I
think, good evidence to show that in the more southerly portions of
South Africa lions not infrequently developed a growth of long hair all
over their bellies; for not only are all the lions figured by Captain
(afterwards Sir Cornwallis) Harris so adorned, but there is now in the
Junior United Service Club in London a mounted specimen of a South
African lion with not only an extraordinary wealth of mane covering
the whole of the fore-part of the body, but also with a thick growth
of long hair all over its belly. This lion is said to have been killed
near the Orange river about 1830, probably, I should think, on the
bontebok flats, near Colesberg, in the Cape Colony, though possibly on
the plains to the north of the river. Now, personally I believe that
cold has more to do with the development of a lion's mane than anything
else. The winter cold of the high plateaus of the Cape Colony, the
Orange Colony, and the Southern Transvaal is much more severe than in
any part of Africa where lions exist to-day, and Harris's drawings and
the mounted specimen of the lion I have above referred to, which was
killed near the Orange river long ago, show that wild lions sometimes
attained very profuse manes and had their bellies covered with long
hair in that part of Africa. To-day, lions with really fine manes are
never found except in countries where the nights are cold during the
winter months, such as the Athi plains, the Uas N'gishu plateau, the
high downs of Matabeleland and Mashunaland, and the Haud of Somaliland,
as well as other elevated regions. In the Pungwe river district some
few lions attain fairly good, but never, I believe, extraordinarily
profuse manes. Only a certain proportion of the lions found on high and
cold plateaus have, however, fine long dark manes. Many have very poor
manes, but it seems to me impossible that there can be more than one
species of lion in so confined an area. In the hotter parts of Africa,
lying below the level of the more elevated plateaus, I think I am
correct in saying that lions never get fine manes, and the hotter the
climate, the poorer on the average the manes will be. The fact that the
high, cold plateaus are always open grasslands free from thorn-bush,
whilst the lower parts of the country are usually covered with scrubby
bush and thorny thickets, has led many people to think that lions
have poor manes in bush-covered countries because the thorns tear out
the hair; but I think that this is quite a mistaken idea, for in the
western part of Matabeleland, in the neighbourhood of the Ramokwebani
and Tati rivers, where the winter nights are very cold, although the
whole country is covered with forest, much of it dense thorn-bush,
the lions used sometimes to grow very fine long manes. Personally,
therefore, I am convinced that climate is the main factor in the
production of a lion's mane, and possibly very high feeding may help
to produce certain exceptionally fine animals. As the high plateaus
of Southern and Eastern Africa have, before the advent of Europeans,
always teemed with great multitudes of zebras and antelopes, and in
some cases buffaloes as well, the lions of the high and cold plateaus
have most certainly always been well fed. The lions living in the
Pungwe river district too must, before the advent of Europeans, have
been exceptionally well fed.
It has always seemed to me that in Africa and India, where, although
the nights may be cold, the sun is always hot, a heavy mane must be
more or less of a nuisance and encumbrance to a lion; and I believe
that such a wonderful growth of hair must be a reversion to an
ancestral adornment first evolved in a cold climate.
The fossil remains of the so-called cave lion (_Felis spelaea_),
which have been discovered in great abundance in the cave deposits
of Pleistocene times in Western Europe, are said by Professor Boyd
Dawkins to present absolutely no osteological or dental character by
which they can be distinguished from those of existing lions, and I
think that we are therefore justified in believing that the lion was
first evolved in a cold climate, and that in the course of ages it
gradually spread south and east, following the migrations of the game
on which it preyed. It probably entered Africa before that continent
was separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea, at the same time
as the ancestors of the giraffes, antelopes, buffaloes, elephants, and
rhinoceroses of to-day, and accompanied them through Eastern Africa
right down to Cape Agulhas. Some lions remained in Europe long after
the separation of Africa from that continent, and even in the time of
Herodotus these animals appear to have been still common throughout
South-Eastern Europe.
As the ancient cave lions which roamed the woods and plains of Western
Europe co-existed with bears, mammoths, reindeer, elk, wild cattle, and
other denizens of a cold country, there can be little doubt that their
coats were thick and furry in both sexes, whilst a heavy mane would
have been an adornment to the males without being an encumbrance.
That the flowing mane and shaggy hair on the belly of the male lion
were first evolved in a cold climate is, I think, proved by the
undoubted fact that there is an inherited tendency in all lions to grow
a mane, which is crippled and dwarfed by a hot climate but encouraged
by exposure to cold. Quite recently there was a fine lion in the
Zoological Society's Gardens at Regent's Park which was presented by
Messrs. Grogan and Sharpe. This animal was caught near the Pungwe
river, in South-East Africa, and brought to England by these gentlemen
when quite a small cub. When full-grown it developed a very much finer
mane than I believe has ever been seen in a wild lion that has come to
maturity in the part of Africa from which it was brought. Similarly,
some thirty years ago there was a very fine lion in the Society's
Gardens which was brought by Colonel Knox from the Soudan. Colonel Knox
took me to the Gardens to see this animal, and pointed out to me the
fact that it had developed a far finer mane (extending much farther
back over the shoulders and under the belly) than any man had ever seen
in a wild lion in the country from which it came. Lion cubs brought to
this country from India also grow fine manes, though I do not think
that there is any record of a lion ever having been shot in India with
anything more than a fairly good mane. The fact that lion cubs captured
in any part of Africa or Asia, and brought up in the comparatively cool
and damp climate of Western Europe, always--or nearly always--grow fine
manes, which usually cover the whole shoulders and often extend all
over the under-surface of the body, and the further fact that in the
hotter parts of Africa lions always have very scanty manes, but on the
high, cold plateaus often develop good, and occasionally very luxuriant
manes, appears to me to show that a heavily maned lion is a reversion
to an ancient ancestral type, first evolved in Pleistocene times in a
cold and inclement climate.