THE JUNGLE KING CAN BE LURED TO DOOM BY CATNIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18900, 26 October 1929, Page 22 (Supplement)

THE JUNGLE KING CAN BE LURED TO DOOM BY CATNIP.

HIS FEROCITY CHANGES TO ECSTASY WHEN HE SMELLS PLANT.

, The venerable joker of ages ago who told the little boy that the best way to catch a bird was to shake a little salt 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 delivers 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 is to—catch him with catnip!

Shades of Livingstone and Stanlev and those fictional heroes of H. Rider Haggard!

The lion—skulking king of the jungle, ferocious man-killer—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 tlie 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 his 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 tlieir own business and looking not at all like the ferocious 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 yon, 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 as almost everything else in our

covered that that lordly king of tin beasts is jnst as susceptible to the intoxicating odour of catnip as the most harmless town cat that ever eat 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 jiingle for the first faint rustle of grass that tells the watchful hunter lhat 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 the same lure and attraction as catnip In a trap and wait until his majesty has caught the scent. After that the work is easy. 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 two 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 Xepeta 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 aa animal life itself. Scent glands exist in all animals, human beings included. These glands secrete a substance which 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 woodland their mates may be found. (Anglo-American N. S. Copyright.)