Lion.
The King of Beasts will, therefore, be the hero of this chapter. Lydekker tells us that the lion, like many heroes of antiquity who are no heroes to their valets, in spite of his character for grandeur, nobility and courage, has been subjected to the merciless higher criticism of modern travellers, Selous, Livingstone, and others, and he has been shown up as cowardly by nature and mean in his general conduct. It remains for some learned scholar to whitewash the hyæna, as someone has done for Caesar Borgia, and to put him in the place of the lion. But Lydekker does not admit that this disparagement of the lion goes very far. He is the King of Beasts by grandeur of appearance, strength and ferocity.
Fig. 36.—Lioness, showing by arrows the direction of hair-streams on muzzle, parting from one another at the level of the orbits.
The lion’s skin is covered by close fine hair, except in certain seasons in cold climates, and is easily studied. There are three regions where this representative cat has departed from the Primitive mammalian slope of hair, and the figure of a lioness shows two of these, the peculiar downward trend of hair on the muzzle and the whorl on the shoulder. Fig. [37] shows the third, A C, on the middle of the back as well as the whorls at D.