CATCHING JUNGLE KING.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 15 (Supplement)

CATCHING JUNGLE KING.

THE LIJRE OF CATNIP. NOVEL METHOD OF LION HUNTING. CHANGES FEROCITY TO ECSTASY. . , (By A. C. JONES.) The venerable joker of ages ago who told the little boy that the best way to catch a bird was to shake a little 3alt on his tail was telling the truth. It was! And it is! And the.reason is obvious! But now, centuries after that sage advice, with no bird grabbed yet, it is no hoary-headed grandad with beard resting on his bosom that the lastest method of catching lions. It is science—cold and exact and exacting science—which says that the best way. to catch a lion in to —-catch him with catnip! Shades of Livingstone and Stanley and those fictional heroes of, IL Rider Haggard! The lion—skulking king of the jungle, ferocious man-kiUer—whose mighty roar made brave hearts stand still and whose devouring jaws feasted on babes torn from mothers' arms — thus to be humiliated! On a sweet summer morning, when the kitten is playing on the checkered lawn, and you give him a spray of catnip, and he rolls on the grass and purrs like a motor car engine and spins about on Ms nose and claws, the air in sheer ecstasy as he smells the pungent vegetation— that is the picture you must conceive of the lion who has been thus trapped by the scientific hunter. The Fateful Sprig, Out in the jungle one comes upon three lions, minding their own business and looking not at all like the ferociou3 animals we love to read about in the modest tales of fearless hunters returning from the wilds who shoot them from the dangerous cover of an elephant's back or with high-powered rifles equipped with telescopic sights. One. thrusts a hand stealthily into a back pocket and, instead of drawing forth the blue-bar-elled automatic equipped "with the firing pin that never fails in an emergency (the advertisements ■will tell you, for dead men cannot testify otherwise), out comes a sprig of catnip. And you hurl it into the field among the lions, Will they bother about mere meat of man ? Will they permit their smell of catnip to be interfered, with by the odour of human flesh? . Will they allow countless eons: of hereditary to warn them that with the scent of man about them the smell of catnip should be'ignored? Certainly not! For science so says. Thus that most thrilling and dangerous of sports—lion hunting— has been, reduced just almost everything -our

existence to-day, to a science. The ingenious chemists of to-day have discovered that that lordly king of the beasts is justfas susceptible to the intoxicating odour of catnip as the most harmless town cat that ever sat on a roof and kept a neighbourhood awake by serenading his feline flame. There, are no more breathless moments of anxious waiting in the depths of an African jungle for the first faint Tustle of grass that tells the watchful hunter that his prey, the lord of the forests, is-approaching (science has taken away all the thrill from that nowadays) for all the hunter has to do is to place a little of the artificial oil that has tbe same lure and attraction as catnip in a trap and wait until his majesty has caught the scent. After that the work is easy. k A Range of Miles. ■ As soon as the lion sniffs the air and discovers that somewhere nearby there is that delightful odour, he takes to his heels and in a few moments finds the •source. The watching hunter might ■utter a chuckle or tw6 at this point. His battle is already won, for as swiftly as the moth flies to the flame, or the habitual drinker to where the free drinks are being served, the lion enters the trap and the steel is sprung. The common catnip which we usually hear about is a plain and simple form of garden weed; scientifically named Nepeta Cataria. To the human being the odour has no attraction at all, but to'a cat, or any member of the cat family, it has an attraction so strong that it seems impossible to resist it. In an animal, of course, the scent is very faint, but in the catnip plant it is powerful enough to attract miles away. The fundamental principles of animal lures are in all likelihood as. old as animal life itself. Scent glands exist in all animals, human beings included. These glands secrete a substance wjiich has the power of attracting animals of the opposite sex, who are always 'keenly, sensitive to these odours, so .that even in the thickest part of the J woodland their mates may be found. '•-'.■ • (Anglo-American N. S. '.■">