In one respect the behaviour of these four angry lions was quite different from that of an angry cat or leopard, or even tiger. There was no suspicion of snarling about them. Their mouths were held slightly open, but instead of the upper lip being drawn up so as to expose the upper canine teeth, it was drawn down so as to completely cover them. They stood thus with their mouths held slightly open, growling savagely and twitching their tails from side to side, until two of them charged before I fired at them, and the other two I fired at and killed before they could make up their minds to charge. Now this abstention from all suspicion of snarling which I remember so well in the case of four different lions when driven to bay, and the fact that I do not carry in my mind the picture of any lion snarling that I have ever shot, makes me wonder whether it is correct to depict an angry lion as snarling like an angry cat or leopard. This is a small matter, no doubt, but one which I think it is worth while inquiring into, as if an angry lion really does not snarl, it differs in this respect from all other members of the cat tribe.
I once galloped almost on to a lion lying flat on the ground in grass only about a foot in height before I saw it. When I at last made it out, I was directly in front of, and probably less than twenty yards away from it. As I pulled my horse in, this lion had its head pressed down on its outstretched paws and its eyes were fixed upon me. Had I ridden by, it would certainly never have moved until I had got out of sight. As I raised my rifle and looked down the barrel to align the sights upon its head, I saw the black tuft of hair at the end of its tail flicked lightly from side to side, and the fore-paws, that had been stretched out straight beyond its nose, drawn slowly under its breast, without its head or body being perceptibly raised. I knew the lion was on the very point of charging, but my horse kept breathing hard and I could not get my sight steadily fixed below its eyes. Then, just as I saw the crouching beast's hind-quarters quivering, or rather moving gently from side to side, I fired, and luckily my bullet struck it just between the eyes, and crashing into its brain, killed it instantly, so that it never moved, but still lay crouching on the ground, struck dead at the very last moment before starting on its charge. Since that time I have on several occasions watched a cat when stalking a bird go through every movement made by that lion—the same apparently involuntary twitching of just the end of the tail, the same drawing-in of the fore-paws beneath the chest, and then the wavy movement of the loins just before the final rush. As lions are very nocturnal in their habits and usually hunt by night, it is, of course, very unusual to see them approach and kill their prey, but from the above related experience I imagine that every movement made by a lion in approaching and finally making a rush upon an antelope or zebra is exactly represented in miniature by a cat stalking a bird or rabbit. It is as well to remember that if a lion, after standing for a short time growling at you and whisking its tail backwards and forwards round its hind-legs, suddenly stiffens it and throws it straight into the air at right angles to the line of its back two or three times, it is a danger-signal and means charging. A lion may often charge without throwing its tail straight up, but I believe that it will never throw its tail up without charging.
PLATE SHOWING DIFFERENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MANE IN LIONS INHABITING A COMPARATIVELY SMALL AREA OF COUNTRY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
The skins from which these figures have been drawn are all in the possession of the Author, and are all three those of fully adult animals.
No. 1.—Lion killed on the upper Hanyani river in Mashunaland in June 1880.
No. 2.—Lion killed on the Umzingwani river near Bulawayo in Matabeleland in September 1887.
No. 3.—Lion killed on the Botletlie river, near the Makari-kari Salt-pan, in May 1879.