INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This and the following articles are in no sense hunting articles. I have elsewhere described the chase of the big game. Far more interesting than the chase itself is the observation, the study of the life histories of the strange and wonderful creatures of the wilderness. These articles represent an attempt to present the life histories of the most interesting among the beasts of the African jungles; they are based mainly on first-hand observation, but are also in part based on the cumulative observations of many other men. THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

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HE lion is common throughout all the portions of East Africa which we visited except on the high, wet plateaus and in the dense forests; we did not come across it in Uganda, but it was found in the Lado and less commonly along the White Nile to the Sobat. There are geographical varieties; but the presence or absence of the mane, and its color-black, tawny, or mixed-represent individual and not specific or subspecific variation; black and yellow maned lions come from the same litter, and the fulness of the mane may vary greatly among males from the same litter, although it is apt to be heaviest where the climate is cold.

The litters are certainly born at various times. Judging by the cubs we saw, one litter must have been produced by a lioness on the Kapiti Plains in January, and another on the upper Guaso Nyiro of the north about the first of June, and in each there were in the immediate neighborhood of the litters of comparatively young cubs-three or four months oldother young lions probably three or four months older. This must mean that in East Africa litters may be born at almost any season of the year. The lying-in place of the lioness is sometimes in a cave, sometimes in thick brush or long grass. Normally the cubs remain where they were born for a few weeks, the mother leaving them to hunt and returning sometimes after an absence of forty-eight hours; but they make no noise even when left thus long. If game is abundant they may keep to the original lair for several months, but if game is scarce, or for other reasons, the lioness may shift her quarters when her young ones are not much bigger than tom-cats, and the family may then be seen travelling long distances, until another suitable place for a lair is reached. When the cubs are three months old or so, they habitually travel with the mother; then, instead of the lioness eating her fill

at a kill, and afterward returning to the cubs, the latter run up to the kill and feed at it with their mother. I found flesh and hair in the stomachs of two cubs; for they begin to eat flesh long before they stop suckling. While still very young they try, in clumsy fashion, to kill birds and small animals. By the time they are four or five months old they sometimes endeavor to assist the mother when she has pulled down some game which is not formidable, but has not killed it outright before they come up; and soon afterward they begin to try regularly to help her in killing, and they speedily begin to help her in hunting and to attempt to hunt for themselves. Evidently in their first attempts they claw and bite their prey everywhere; for I have found carcasses of zebra and hartebeest thus killed by family parties which were scarred all over.

Lions are sometimes monogamous and sometimes polygamous, and there is much variety in the way they conduct their family life. It is a common thing for an old male to be found alone, and it is no less common for two adult males to be found in company, living and hunting together; the two famous man-eaters of Tsavo, which for a time put a complete stop to the building of the Uganda railroad, were

in the latter category. A lion and a lioness are often found together, and in such case a strong attachment may be shown between them and the union be apparently permanent; at least this would seem to be the case from the fact that such pairs will often remain together just before the birth of the cubs and while the latter are very little, the lion lying up during the day in the neighborhood of his mate and her litter. But it is a frequent thing to find a party of lions consisting of one old male, of two or three or four females, and of the cubs of some of the latter; and these parties are well known to the Wakamba and 'Ndorobo hunters, and their association is permanent, so that these cases evidently afford instances of polygamy. Two or three lionesses sometimes live in companionship, with perhaps the cubs of one or more of them, and a single lioness may be found either by herself or with the cubs of one litter, or of two litters. On one occasion I found a lioness associating with a young male, not yet quite fully grown but already much bigger than she was, and a couple of young cubs, perhaps two or three months old; now, from information given me by the natives, I am inclined to think (although, of course, I am not certain), that the young male was one of her cubs

of a former litter, and the father of the cubs that were with them. Finally, it may happen that lions join temporarily in larger parties, which may contain two or three adult males, several females, and young animals of various ages; but I am inclined to believe that these associations are short-lived, being due to peculiar conditions, such as great local abundance of game for lions often hunt together in order to profit by mutual support.

Lions are noisy animals where they have not been much molested; but, for some reason or other, if they are so hunted that their numbers are much thinned, the survivors seem to roar less frequently than formerly. The roaring is done at night; but once in the Lado I heard a lion roar after sunrise. There is no grander sound in nature than the roaring of a troop of lions. The old male begins and the others chime in, at first with low moans, that grow louder and louder until the fulllunged roaring can literally be heard for miles; then the roars gradually die away into gasping grunts. The volume of sound is extraordinary and can not possibly be mistaken for any other noise if reasonably close; but of course if far enough distant it becomes only partially audible, and may then resemble the booming of an

ostrich heard near by; and in thick cover the grunt or growl of a lion, indistinctly heard, may be mistaken for the grunt of a buffalo or the occasional growl-I know no other word to describe the sound of an elephant, a beast which sometimes utters the queerest and most unexpected noises. It has been asserted that the lion never roars when hungry, because to do so would frighten his prey, and that his roaring is a sign that he is full fed; this sounds plausible; and yet as a matter of fact I doubt if it is true. Unquestionably, after a successful chase lions roar freely; I have most often heard them between midnight and morning. But I have also heard regular roaring-not mere moaning, or the panting noise occasionally indulged in by a hungry questing beast-soon after dark, and this was persevered in at intervals for an hour or so. I am inclined to think that generally lions are silent until they have killed, but that occasionally, whether as signals to one another or from mere pride and overbearing insolence, they roar at intervals on their way through the darkness from their resting-place to their hunting-field. Of course, when they reach the actual place where they are to hunt they become quiet; unless they deliberately try to stampede the animals by roaring, or unless several are hunting together, spread out around a herd of zebra or antelope, when one may roar or grunt to scare the animals toward the others. Ordinarily lions make no sound that can alarm their prey; yet even when actually hunting an occasional hungry lion may utter a kind of sigh or moan-an eerie sound when heard close by in the pitchy darkness. On rare occasions a lioness deprived of her cubs or one of a pair of lions whose mate has been shot will roar savagely after nightfall, perhaps in the neighborhood where the loss occurred, perhaps while travelling about. Old males may roar again and again in answer to one another as if challenging; and if one party begins to roar it will often bring an answer from any lion within hearing. At bay a lion utters a continuous growling, broken by muttered roars; and he grunts loudly as he charges. When disturbed a lion grunts as he gallops away.

Lions do not go into heavy forest, although they make their day lairs along the edges. They like to lie up for the day

in patches of jungle which border on open plains, in bushes in open scrub, in clumps of reeds, in any thick bit of cover in the open thorn forests which are so plentiful in much of the game country; and perhaps especially in a strip of cover along a river, or one of the dense masses of brush and trees, of small extent, which are found along the watercourses. They also lie in tall grass. Occasionally they lie, throughout the day, right out in the open, on a mound or the side of an ant-hill, or under a low bush or tree that does not shield them from sight. If the grass is very tall they find it easy to get close to their prey and to evade human observation; and where the brush is thick or the open forest fairly continuous it is almost a chance if one comes on them. If much molested they become strictly nocturnal; otherwise, under more natural conditions, although they spend most of the day sleeping, they may sometimes be seen leisurely strolling in the open, and they often return to their resting-places after sunrise, and leave them before sunset-although even under such circumstances it is only exceptionally that they hunt except under cover of darkness. Once we came on a big male lion in midafternoon walking back across the open plain to a zebra he had killed on the previous night; and once, at the same time of day, we came on a lioness leading her cubs back to the carcass of a wildebeest, also slain over night. On another afternoon we came across a lion and lioness gazing intently at an old bull wildebeest which was returning their stare, very much on the alert, at a distance of sixty yards.

Except when resting, and in the breeding-season, the whole career of a lion may be summed up in the single word, rapine. For all the creatures of the wilderness, save the full-grown elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, he is the terror that stalks by night. His prowess is extraordinary. His tactics are stealth, surprise, and sudden overwhelming fury of attack. Occasionally he hunts by day, but in the great majority of cases by night; and the darker the night the bolder he is and the more to be feared. If an animal passes close to his resting-place in the daytime he will often attack it; and in wild regions he may if hungry begin to hunt early in the afternoon or continue to hunt late in