Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next morning the Lion walked up a hill with the man in his mouth, when about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him.
The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African. William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent development of the mane is very striking in this figure.
Maneless Lions have been found on the confines of Arabia, and were known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed, Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master.
In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and furnished at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet 9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4 inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low, bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass. Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however, do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner.
In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion, which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a very touching narrative, even of the Lion family.
The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The roar of the adult Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth.
The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will, it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766, was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at the age of sixty-three.
There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett, and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers, however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed. Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach, having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail, immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies, remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the Lion became more irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however, appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access; but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after its removal from the living animal, and while yet soft at its base, where it had been attached to the skin. Its shape was nearly straight, then slightly contracted, forming a very obtuse angle, and afterwards swelling out like the bulb of a bristle, to its termination. It was laterally flattened throughout its entire length, which did not amount to quite three-eighths of an inch, of horn colour, and nearly black at the tip. Its connexion with the skin must have been very slight, which accounts for its usual absence in stuffed as well as living specimens. This does not depend upon age, as it was found alike in the Paris Lions, of considerable size, as well as in the Zoological Society's Lions, very small and young; nor did it depend upon sex. It appears to be occasionally present in the Leopard; and, in both Lion and Leopard, it is seated at the extreme tip of the tail, and is altogether unconnected with the terminal caudal vertebra; not fitted on like a cap, but rather inserted into the skin.
The use of the prickle, however, it still remained difficult to conjecture; but that its existence was known to the ancients is proved by the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum, in an exaggerated representation of the claw, in support of this curious fact in natural history. The existence of the claw has been proved by Mr. Bennett; and "it is no small gratification to be able now to quote in evidence of the statement of Mr. Bennett, and of his predecessor. Didymus, of Alexandria, the original and authentic document, on the authority of the veritable descendants of the renowned hunter Nimroud; which any one may read who will take the trouble to examine the sculptured slab in the British Museum." [8]