The Living Animals of the World, Volume I: Mammals

HEAD OF AYE-AYE,

Photo by Charles Knight, Aldershot.

AFRICAN LION AND LIONESS.

These animals are so numerous in the new British Protectorate of East Africa that they are exempted from protection.

UNIV. OF

CALIFORNIA

Photo by Fratelli Alinari] [florenvt.

AFKTCAX LION.

'This lion is almost in the attitude of those sculptured by Sir Edwin Landseer for U.e Xelson Monuineut, but the feet are turned in, and not lying flat.

CHAPTER II.

THE CAT TRIBE.

only one species is entirely domesticated, and none of the Cats have flesh edible by man, except perhaps the puma, no group of animals has attracted more interestTHOUGH tluin this. Containing more than forty species, ranging in size from the ox-devouring tiger or lion to the small wild cats, they are so alike in habit and structure that no one could possibly mistake the type or go far wrong in guessing at the habits of any one of them. They are all flesh-eaters and destroyers of living animals. All have rounded heads, and an extraordinary equipment of teeth and of claws, and of muscles to use them. The blow of the forearm of a lion or tiger is inconceivably powerful, in proportion to its size. A stroke from a tiger's paw has been known to strike off a native's arm from the shoulder and leave it hanging by a piece of skin, and a similar blow from a lion to crush the skull of an ox. The true cats are known by the power to draw back, or " retract," their claws into sheaths of horn, rendering their footsteps noiseless, and keeping these weapons always sharp. The hunting-leopard has only a partial capacity for doing this. The characteristics of the Cats and their allies are too well known to need description. We will therefore only mention the chief types of the group, and proceed to give, in the fullest detail which space allows, authentic anecdotes of their life and habits. The tribe includes Lions, Tigers, Leopards. Pumas, Jaguars, a large number of so-called Tiger-cats (spotted By permission of Herr Carl Hagenbtck, Hamburg. and striped), Wild Cats, Domestic Cats, and Lynxes. The

PUPIL. AN UNWILLING

Hunting-leopard, or Cheeta, stands in a sub-group by itself,This is one of famous per Herr Hagenbeck's forming tigers. as does the Fossa, the only large carnivore of Madagascar. S3 5

of the World The Living Animals34

This closes the list of the most cat-like animals. The next links in the chain are formed by the Civets and Genets, creatures with more or less retractile claws, and long, bushy tails; the still less cat-like Binturong, a creature with a prehensile tail; and the Mongooses and Ichneumons, more and more nearly resembling the weasel tribe.

THE LION.

KECENT intrusions for railways, sport, discovery, and war into Central and East Africa have opened up new lion countries, and confirmed, in the most striking manner, the stories of the power, the prowess, and the dreadful destructiveness to man and beast of this king of the Carnivora. At present it is found in Persia, on the same rivers where Nimrod and the Assyrian kings made its pursuit their royal sport; in Gujerat, where it is nearly extinct,

Photo by York & Son] [NoMng Hill. though in General Price's work on LIONESS AROUSED. Indian game written before the middle

The pose of the animal here shows attention, but not anger or fear. of the last century it is stated that a cavalry officer killed eighty lions in three is especially common inyears; and in Africa, from Algeria to the Bechuana country. It Somaliland, where the modern lion-hunter mainly seeks his sport. On the Uganda Eailway, from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, lions are very numerous and dangerous. In Khodesia and the Northern Transvaal they have killed hunters, railway officials, and even our soldiers near Komati Poort. It has been found that whole tracts of country are still often deserted by their inhabitants from fear of lions, and that the accounts of their ravages contained in the Old Testament, telling how Samaria was almost deserted a second time from this cause, might be paralleled to-day.

THE AFRICAN LION.

BY F. C. SELOUS.

When, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, Europeans first settled at the Cape of Good Hope, the lion's roar was probably to be heard almost nightly on the slopes of Table first Dutch governor of theMountain, since a quaint entry in the Diary of Van Eiebeck, the " the lions roared as if they would take the fort by storm: " This night theCape, runs thus said fort being situated on the site of the city now known as Cape Town.

At that date there can be little doubt that, excepting in the waterless deserts and the dense equatorial forests, lions roamed over the whole of the vast continent of Africa from Cape Agulhas to the very shore of the Mediterranean Sea; nor was their range very seriously curtailed until the spread of European settlements in North and South Africa, and the acquisition of firearms by the aboriginal inhabitants of many parts of the country, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, steadily denuded large areas of all wild game.

As the game vanished, the lions disappeared too; for although at first they preyed to a large extent on the domestic flocks and herds which gradually replaced the wild denizens of

[Algiers. Photo by JV/. Geiser]

ALGERIAN LIONESS.

This lioness, sitting under an olive-tree, was actually photographed in the Soudan hy the intrepid M. Geiser.

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of the World The Living Animals

the once-uninhabited plains, this practice brought them into conflict with the white colonists or native herdsmen armed with weapons of precision, before whom they rapidly succumbed. To-day lions are still to be found wherever game exists in any quantity, and their numbers will be in proportion to those of the wild animals on which they prey. The indefinite increase of lions must be checked by some unknown law of

A FOSTER-MOTHER.

This is a remarkable photograph of a setter suckling three lion cubs which had lost their mother. It is reproduced here by permission of the Editor of the Irish Field,

nature, otherwise they would have become so numerous in the sparsely inhabited or altogether uninhabited parts of Africa, that they would first have exterminated all the game on which they had been wont to prey, and would then have had to starve or to have eaten one another. But such a state of things has never been known to occur; and whenever Europeans have entered a previously unexplored and uninhabited tract of country in Africa, and have found it teeming with buffaloes, zebras, and antelopes, they have always found lions in such districts By permission of //err Carl ffagenbeck] [Hamburg. very plentiful indeed, but never in such numbers A PERFORMING LION. as to seriously diminish the abundance of the Lions, it would seem, are capable of being taught almost anything, even tricycle-riding.

game upon which they de-pended for food. It is easy to understand that the increase of a herd of herbivorous animals would be regulated by the amount of the food-supply available, as well as constantly checked by the attacks of the large carnivora, such as lions, leopards, cheetas, hyaenas, and wild dogs; but I have never been able to comprehend what has kept within bounds the inordinate increase of lions and other carnivorous animals in countries where Photo by G. W. Wilson A Co., Ltd.] [Aberdeen. LIONESS AND CUB. for ages past they have had

Lion cubs thrive both in Dublin and Amsterdam, but not so well at the London Zoo. an abundant food-supply, and

The Cat Tribe 37 at the same time, having been almost entirely unmolested by human beings, have had no enemies. Perhaps such a state of things does not exist at the present day, but there are many parts of Africa where such conditions have existed from time immemorial up to within quite recent years. Since lions were once to be found over the greater portion of the vast continent of Africa, it is self-evident that these animals are able to accommodate themselves to great variations of climate and surroundings; and I myself have rnet with them, close to the sea, in the hot and sultry coastlands of South-east Africa; on the high plateau of Mashonaland, where at an altitude of 6,000 feet above sea-level the winter nights are cold and frosty; amongst the stony hills to the east of the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi; and in the swamps of the Chobi. In the great reed-beds of the latter river a certain number of lions appeared to live constantly, preying on buffaloes and lechwe antelopes. I often heard them roaring at nights

Photo by Pratelli Alinari] [ftorence.

A YOUNG LIONESS.

The sole of the hind foot shows the soft pads on which the Cats noiselessly approach their prey.

in these swamps, and I once saw two big male lions wading slowly across an open space between two beds of reeds in water nearly a foot in depth.

Although there are great individual differences in lions as regards size, general colour of coat, and more particularly in the length, colour, and profuseness of the mane with which the males are adorned, yet as these differences occur in every part of Africa where lions are met with, and since constant varieties with one fixed type of mane living by themselves and not interbreeding with other varieties do not exist anywhere, modern zoologists is only one species of lion, since in any large series ofare, I think, now agreed that there wild lion skins, made in any particular district of Africa or Asia, every gradation will be found all. Severalbetween the finest-maned specimens and those which are destitute of any mane at local race? have, however, been recently described by German writers.

In the hot and steamy coastlands of tropical Africa lions usually have short manes, and never, I believe, attain the long silky black manes sometimes met with on the high plateaux of the interior. However, there is, I believe, no part of Africa where all or even the majority