“From the earliest times,” says the writer on this subject in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” “few animals have been better known to man than the lion.” It is precisely because of this knowledge, for the most part purely imaginary, that the real lion is less known than almost any of the other great wild beasts. Not so much in this case on account of the paucity of facts as from a plethora of fiction, his actual character has very imperfectly come to light.
Since Aristotle there have always been naturalists who contended for two species of these animals, and sometimes more.
THE LION.
[From a photograph by Gambier Bolton. Copyright.]
In Greece, classification was made on the basis of size; in Rome, upon that of color. With regard to the first, Sir Samuel Baker remarks that the lions of Cutch and Guzrat are perhaps not so large as their African congeners; but according to Dr. Jerdon (“Mammals of India”) measurements show that they are fully equal in this respect. Gérard, Livingstone, and others notice very discernible local contrasts in bulk among them in different parts of Africa itself, and it has been maintained by many that the lion grows smaller as one goes south from the Atlas. Major Smee has also been largely followed in his opinion that the Asiatic, or more particularly the Indian, lion is maneless. Dr. Blyth, however, was able to demonstrate from the specimens in the Calcutta Museum that this was not the case, and his view of the accidental character of this deficiency is no doubt the true one. Frederick Courteney Selous (“A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa”) paid particular attention to this feature, and he states that “out of fifty male lion skins, scarcely two will be found alike in the color or length of mane”; he adds that, judging from the same facts which those who multiply natural groups rely upon, “it would be as reasonable to suppose that there are twenty species as two.”
This is but a hint at those discrepancies which have arisen from attaching different values to external and secondary characteristics. Antagonisms of this kind are overabundant, still there is no doubt that wherever lions now exist, they are specifically the same. There is but one genus of lion, with a single species, whose members vary in size, skin-appendages, color, temper, and habits, with the physiography of those provinces they inhabit, and of their human population, with breed, age, temperament, special environment, and their personal experience of men and things.
Sir Samuel Baker (“The Rifle and Hound in Ceylon”) remarks in the course of his observations upon the Cingalese buffalo that no individual opinion upon the traits and disposition of an animal “can be depended upon,” unless its pursuit “has been followed as a sport by itself.” The results of many hunters’ experiences are, however, on record, and so far as facts go, we are actually possessed of a more varied and extensive acquaintance with the species than any individual contact with it would be likely to give.
There is much that is inadequate and also illusory in Gérard’s descriptions. Still, he met the formidable adversaries he encountered in a heroic spirit, and had seen them face to face too often not to be disabused of many errors. The sultan of the desert as known by him did not fear man, was not abashed in his presence, and could not be quelled by his eye. On the contrary, an attempt to stare him out of countenance was, as Sir Samuel Baker observes, the surest means to provoke an attack. Gérard’s experience carried him too far. He only knew the lions of Algeria and Oran, but he thought that these animals were the same everywhere. Such is not the case. The race is now extinct in great areas where it was once distributed. No trace of it is left in many countries of Asia Minor, and it is dying out in Western Asia and India. In some regions man has exterminated the lion or driven him away, and there are other districts where this animal has learned that the battle nearly always goes against him, and where he now has to be forced to fight. On the other hand, certain tribes cower before lions, and this does not fail to change the relations they sustain towards mankind.
This imposing animal makes its appearance in art and literature very early. Frequent mention is made of it in the Cuneiform tablets and Hebrew Scriptures. In Pentaur’s Egyptian Epic upon the War of Rameses II. against the Cheta or Hittites, lions are said to have accompanied the king’s chariot, and fought as the Greek mastiffs (the dogs of Molossos) did at Marathon, or those of the British during Cæsar’s invasion. Herodotus (“Polymnia”) states that when Xerxes’ hordes were moving in the country that lay between the rivers Nestos in Abedra, and Achelous of Acarnania, the camel trains suffered much loss from the attacks of these animals. He informs us that their range was restricted to this district, and expresses his surprise that camels, being creatures that these lions had never seen and might have been supposed to shun, were their especial victims. After Herodotus, when the Greeks began to write about everything that attracted their attention, much was said in one way or another concerning lions, but it amounted to no more than the little that can be found in Roman archives. It really seems as if classic writers left out on purpose everything that one would have cared most to know. Not even the minute and laborious scholarship of the sixteenth century, devoted as it mainly was to the explication of antiquity, has succeeded in extracting from these records any information which is at all commensurate with the opportunities afforded for observation in ancient times. The lion occupied an exceptional position then as now; he was a favorite subject for poetic allusion, for epigram, and rhetorical flourishes. But his character was as much a conventional one at that time as it is at present. This may be also seen in art, where, whether sculptured and painted, or set in mosaics, he was depicted in what were supposed to be characteristic attitudes from Persepolis and the rock tablets of Kaf to the Sea of Darkness, and from the banks of the Orontes to the cities of Africa. He impressed antiquity as he has done the modern world, and so far as disposition and personal qualities are concerned, most of what was known or thought then might have been condensed into the modern statement of his traits given in the French “Cyclopédie”; namely, that he was “si fort et si courageux, qu’on l’a appellé le roi des animaux.”