At that date there can be little doubt that, excepting in the waterless deserts and the dense equatorial forests, lions roamed over the whole of the vast continent of Africa from Cape Agulhas to the very shore of the Mediterranean Sea; nor was their range very seriously curtailed until the spread of European settlements in North and South Africa, and the acquisition of firearms by the aboriginal inhabitants of many parts of the country, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, steadily denuded large areas of all wild game.
Photo by M. Geiser] [Algiers.
ALGERIAN LIONESS.
This lioness, sitting under an olive-tree, was actually photographed in the Soudan by the intrepid M. Geiser.
As the game vanished, the lions disappeared too; for although at first they preyed to a large extent on the domestic flocks and herds which gradually replaced the wild denizens of the once-uninhabited plains, this practice brought them into conflict with the white colonists or native herdsmen armed with weapons of precision, before whom they rapidly succumbed.
A FOSTER-MOTHER.
This is a remarkable photograph of a setter suckling three lion cubs which had lost their mother. It is reproduced here by permission of the Editor of the Irish Field.
