ABOUT LIONS.

Timaru Herald, Volume LV, Issue 5673, 12 May 1893, Page 4

ABOUT LIONS.

Mr Selous, the modern Nimrcd, has a good deal to cay about lions, in bis recently pub liahed book. He has shot over 20. MrSpkuo has had many adventures with the king of beasts. On one oooasion he killed three fullgrown lionß with four shots. Lions, it pean.a, are easily killed. A bullet that would not break up an antelope will do for a lion. Per contra, their flesh is capital eating. Lion pie is almost as good as real pastry, and quite as white. Mr Selous is much impressed by the eye of a lion. It if, he says, of a tie-; yellow of intense brillianoy. Tbe lion measure* from 10ft to lift from noße-tip to tail-tip, and weighs well on to 4 cwt. But instead of hold ir.g hh head nobly in tbe air, as royalty i* snppoeed to do, his leonine majesty always walks with his head lower than the line of his baok. Sometimes he raises it to take a look at an intruder, but he lowers it promptly, and trots away with a growl. When at bay, with open mouth and glaring eyes, he holds bis head low between bis Bhoulder?. . He keeps up a continuous growl, twitching his tail from side to side ; and Mr Seloue declares then b.9 ie as un pleasant looking an animal as oan be seen in a day's march. Another illusion that Mr Seloui destroys is that of the animal's mane. Ha asserts that the lions at the Zoo are much more nobly maDed, with rare exceptions, than thsir wild congeners. Leisure and regular meals seem to agree with lions as well bb with

human beings, and the menagerie lion ia for show purpuees muoh more imposing a lion than the monarch of the African desert. On the other hand Mr Seloua does something to j vindicate the roar of the lion from the discredit heaped upon it by Livingstone. The great missionary likened it to the booming of an ostrich Mr Selous says that the ostrich boom sounds as loud at 50 yards distance as the roar of a lion at a distance of three miles. The two notes are as different as the notes of a concertina and a cathedral organ. Mr Selouß says there is nothing in nature more grand and more awe- inspiring than the roaring of several lions in unison, especially if the listener, as Mr Selous was on one occasion, is not more than 15 yards from the performers. Ihe old lions who have worn down their teeth are the most dangerous to human beings. With them, and with tigers, it is necessity, not ohoice,which leads them to diet off man. Lions travel about sometimes in troops, sometimes in ooupleß, and sometimes accompanied by a scores of hyenas. Mr Selous says that horses or oxen that have sever beea mauled by a lion have no instinotive fear of the brute, but onoe let them experience what a lion's scratch or bite is, they ever afterwards go mad with terror. Lions can got over the ground at 2 great pace, they come along like a dog at a clumsy looking gallop, and can usually be overtaken by a good horse. Ihev kill their game in different ways. They spring upon the shoulders of buffaloes, seize their nose with one paw, and break their neck by suddenly jerking the head backward. Horses are sometimes bitten in the throat, sometimes in the baok of the neck behind the head. They never carry off their prey, but merely drag it along the ground, holdJDg it by the book of the neok. When eating a large animal they tear open the belly near the navel and first eat the liver, heart, and lungs. If they vary this they begin by eiting the hindquarters. Sometimes they bury tho entrails in the earth, returning to them hereafter. Hunger is the chief source of the lion's courage. •' A. hungry lion is » true devil, and fears nothing in the world."