LION UNTIL THE LATTER HAD BECOME TIRED OF THE ANNOYANCE,
he would very soon have discovered that Leo is not all good nature,

and that once on his courage will take him in against any odds.
Furthermore, he may be astonished and dismayed to discover that

of a group of several lions, two or three besides the wounded
animal are quite likely to take up the quarrel and charge too. In

other words, in my opinion, the lion avoids trouble when he can,
not from cowardice but from essential indolence or good nature;

but does not need to be cornered* to fight to the death when in
his mind his dignity is sufficiently assailed.

*This is an important distinction in estimating the inherent
courage of man or beast. Even a mouse will fight when cornered.

For of all dangerous beasts the lion, when once aroused, will
alone face odds to the end. The rhinoceros, the elephant, and

even the buffalo can often be turned aside by a shot. A lion
almost always charges home.* Slower and slower he comes, as the

bullets strike; but he comes, until at last he may be just
hitching himself along, his face to the enemy, his fierce spirit

undaunted. When finally he rolls over, he bites the earth in
great mouthfuls; and so passes fighting to the last. The death of

a lion is a fine sight.
*I seem to be generalizing here, but all these conclusions must

be understood to take into consideration the ability" target="_blank" title="n.责任 负债">liability of
individual variation.

No, I must confess, to me the lion is an object of great respect;
and so, I gather, he is to all who have had really extensive

experience. Those like Leslie Tarleton, Lord Delamere, W. N.
MacMillan, Baron von Bronsart, the Hills, Sir Alfred Pease, who

are great lion men, all concede to the lion a courage and
tenacity unequalled by any other living beast. My own experience

is of course nothing as compared to that of these men. Yet I saw
in my nine months afield seventy-one lions. None of these offered

to attack when unwounded or not annoyed. On the other hand, only
one turned tail once the battle was on, and she proved to be a

three quarters grown lioness, sick and out of condition.
It is of course indubitable that where lions have been much shot

they become warier in the matter of keeping out of trouble. They
retire to cover earlier in the morning, and they keep more than

a perfunctory outlook for the casual human being. When hunters
first began to go into the Sotik the lions there would stand

imperturbable, staring at the intruder with curiosity or
indifference. Now they have learned that such performances are

not healthy-and they have probably satisfied their curiosity.
But neither in the Sotik, nor even in the plains around Nairobi

itself, does the lion refuse the challenge once it has been put
up to him squarely. Nor does he need to be cornered. He charges

in quite blithely from the open plain, once convinced that you
are really an annoyance.

As to habits! The only sure thing about a lion is his
originality. He has more exceptions to his rules than the German

language. Men who have been mighty lion hunters for many years,
and who have brought to their hunting close observation, can only

tell you what a lion MAY do in certain circumstances. Following
very broad principles, they may even predict what he is APT to

do, but never what he certainly WILL do. That is one thing that
makes lion hunting interesting.

In general, then, the lion frequents that part of the country
where feed the great game herds. From them he takes his toll by

night, retiring during the day into the shallow ravines, the
brush patches, or the rocky little buttes. I have, however, seen

lions miles from game, slumbering peacefully atop an ant hill.
Indeed, occasionally, a pack of lions likes to live high in the

tall-grass ridges where every hunt will mean for them a four- or
five-mile jaunt out and back again. He needs water, after

feeding, and so rarely gets farther than eight or ten miles from
that necessity.

He hunts at night. This is as nearly invariable a rule as can be
formulated in regard to lions. Yet once, and perhaps twice, I saw

lionesses stalking through tall grass as early as three o'clock
in the afternoon. This eagerness may, or may not, have had to do

with the possession of hungry cubs. The lion's customary
harmlessness in the daytime is best evidenced, however, by the

comparative indifference of the game to his presence then. From a
hill we watched three of these beasts wandering leisurely across

the plains below. A herd of kongonis feeding directly in their
path, merely moved aside right and left, quite deliberately, to

leave a passage fifty yards or so wide, but otherwise paid not
the slightest attention. I have several times seen this

incident, or a modification of it. And yet, conversely, on a
number of occasions we have received our first intimation of the

presence of lions by the wild stampeding of the game away from a
certain spot.

However, the most of his hunting is done by dark. Between the
hours of sundown and nine o'clock he and his comrades may be

heard uttering the deep coughing grunt typical of this time of
night. These curious, short, far-sounding calls may be mere

evidences of intention, or they may be a sort of signal by means
of which the various hunters keep in touch. After a little they

cease. Then one is quite likely to hear the petulant, alarmed
barking of zebra, or to feel the vibrations of many hoofs. There

is a sense of hurried, flurried uneasinessabroad on the veldt.
The lion generally springs on his prey from behind or a little

off the quarter. By the impetus his own weight he hurls his
victim forward, doubling its head under, and very neatly breaking

its neck. I have never seen this done, but the process has been
well observed and attested; and certainly, of the many hundreds

of lion kills I have taken the pains to inspect, the majority had
had their necks broken. Sometimes, but apparently more rarely,

the lion kills its prey by a bite in the back of the neck. I have
seen zebra killed in this fashion, but never any of the buck. It

may be possible that the lack of horns makes it more difficult to
break a zebra's neck because of the corresponding lack of

leverage when its head hits the ground sidewise; the instances I
have noted may have been those in which the lion's spring landed

too far back to throw the victimproperly; or perhaps they were
merely examples of the great variability in the habits of felis

leo.
Once the kill is made, the lion disembowels the beast very neatly

indeed, and drags the entrails a few feet out of the way. He then
eats what he wants, and, curiously enough, seems often to be very

fond of the skin. In fact, lacking other evidence, it is
occasionally possible to identify a kill as being that of a lion

by noticing whether any considerableportion of the hide has been
devoured. After eating he drinks. Then he is likely to do one of

two things: either he returns to cover near the carcass and lies
down, or he wanders slowly and with satisfaction toward his happy

home. In the latter case the hyenas, jackals, and carrion birds
seize their chance. The astute hunter can often diagnose the

case by the general actions and demeanour of these camp
followers. A half dozen sour and disgusted looking hyenas seated

on their haunches at scattered intervals, and treefuls of
mournfully humpbacked vultures sunk in sadness, indicate that the

lion has decided to save the rest of his zebra until to-morrow
and is not far away. On the other hand, a grand flapping,

snarling Kilkenny-fair of an aggregation swirling about one spot
in the grass means that the principal actor has gone home.

It is ordinarilyuseless to expect to see the lion actually" target="_blank" title="ad.事实上；实际上">actually on
his prey. The feeding is done before dawn, after which the lion

enjoys stretching out in the open until the sun is well up, and
then retiring to the nearest available cover. Still, at the risk

of seeming to be perpetually qualifying, I must instance finding
three lions actually" target="_blank" title="ad.事实上；实际上">actually on the stale carcass of a waterbuck at

eleven o'clock in the morning of a piping hot day! In an
undisturbed country, or one not much hunted, the early morning

hours up to say nine o'clock are quite likely to show you lions