The Helplessness of Old Lions.

occasionally indulge in vegetable food, either as a medicinal corrective, or because they have a fancy for a change of diet. Thus, they will eat quantities of grass, especially when old, possibly from necessity, and Livingstone mentions their feeding on water melons, even at a time when game was very abundant in the neighbourhood. The paunch of a herbivorous animal, too, containing half digested vegetable matter, is often devoured before any other part of the carcase is touched. It might perhaps be worth while to take these facts into consideration in the treatment of caged felidæ.

The helplessness of old age renders most animals an easy prey to their enemies, but what creature, except man, dares attack the tyrant of the forest, even when time has shorn him of almost all his vigour? Lording it over all creation, as he does when in his prime, the day of retribution for the lion comes at length, and with advancing age and stiffening muscles, the pangs of hunger must be a daily torture to the once powerful beast. Then he sneaks about the villages, content to pick up a mangy dog, or dine on offal, or mayhap strike down some feeble old man or woman loitering homewards in the dusk. But the monarch of the forest may fall even lower than this. Decrepitude is apparent in all his frame; his teeth have decayed, so that he can neither catch nor tear up a zebra or an antelope; his sight and hearing fail him, and the palsied brutequantum mutatus ab illo Hectore-is fain to catch mice and fill his belly with grass, until he gradually sinks under the combined effects of disease and starvation.

I am greatly indebted to my friend, Mr. J. T. Nettleship, whose Indian experience has rendered him familiar with the felida in the wild state, for the admirable drawing-taken from one of his life-size oil paintings-which forms the frontispiece to this volume. The lioness is intently watching a herd of antelopes passing through a thicket, with sight, hearing, and smell keenly alive to every movement of the quarry. The attitude, preparatory to gathering herself up for the spring, is finely expressive of reserved power. Mr. F. Babbage, in en

graving the subject with his accustomed care and skill, has well preserved the artist's touch.

No Indian sportsman will for a moment allow the tiger to be placed in the second rank of the great cats, either as regards beauty, power, or ferocity; and many who have only been enabled to compare them in a state of captivity will not hesitate to give the palm to the striped tyrant of the jungle, notwithstanding the reputation which has been attained by his tawny rival. The old controversy about size-pretty well thrashed out as it has already been-will probably be maintained as long as there is a tiger in existence. Sir Joseph Fayrer points out that the size varies considerably in both sexes, and an error of as much as 12in. may be made by measuring the skin alone. Males of full growth may range from 9ft. to 12ft., measured along the spine from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail; and females from 8ft. to 10ft., perhaps (very rarely) 11ft., the height in either case varying from 3ft. to 33ft., possibly sometimes 4ft. at the shoulder. The average for the male, however, is given as 9ft., and for the female 8ft. The tallest and longest individuals are not necessarily the heaviest, and the tail is sometimes relatively long, so that a beast which measured a good length might be a poor specimen, while a short bulky animal would be really far larger. Colonel George Bolieau says of a male killed by himself: "I can speak positively as to the size of the tiger; his length was well over 12ft. before the skin was removed. He was, of course, quite an exceptional size, and unequalled, so far as my own experience goes, which extended over seventeen years of constant hunting after the species. My own experience of the size of tigers is, that in the female the size runs from 8ft. to 9ft.-the latter exceptionally large-in the male, from 9ft. to 11ft. A well grown adult tiger is seldom less than 10ft. in length." Colonel J. Macdonald found only three out of seventy tigers he killed touched 10ft., one of which was 10ft. 4in., the heaviest he ever saw weighing 4481b. Among 180 which Mr. F. B. Simson had seen measured, not one quite reached 11ft. By far the largest skins he had seen were from

China. Colonel Sir H. Green gives the length of a tiger which he killed as 11ft. 1lin., measured in the flesh. Mr. Shillingford, who can reckon over 200 tigers to his "bag," met with one monster that measured as he fell 12ft. 4in., a very old, shorthaired, and faintly-marked animal. This, it appears, is also sometimes equalled, as in the case of one that fell to Mr. White, the gentleman who measured it saying: "I can remember beyond all doubt the length was 12ft. 4in. from tip of nose to tip of tail, 2ft. 2in. from ear to ear, the direct breadth of wrist 8in., spread of foot 10in., heel to withers 4ft."

These particulars, given from memory, were disputed at the time of their publication by several competent judges, and must be taken with the utmost reserve, especially, I think, with respect to the breadth of the wrist. The following dimensions, given by Colonel Ramsay, of a specimen shot by himself, and estimated to be about 12 years old, are likely to be more trustworthy: Extreme length, 12ft.; tail, 3ft. 9in.; height from heel to shoulder, 3ft. 7in.; girth of body behind shoulder, 5ft. 3in.; girth of forearm, 2ft. 10žin.; neck, 3ft. 7in.; distance between ears, 1ft. 6 in.; length of upper canines, 3in.; lower, lain.; claws, 3in. Colonel D. G. Stewart killed a tiger, not at all approaching the above in length, the girth of whose forearm he asserts to have been of the almost incredible size of 4ft., the average being, he says, 32in. or 34in.

Whatever we may allow for error, these proportions proclaim a beast of enormous strength. Let us picture to ourselves an arm as large as the chest of an average man, consisting of two almost parallel bones covered with muscles. We may then realise in some sort the terrific character of the blow dealt by such a limb, armed, too, with four claws, each 3in. in length. It is, indeed, almost possible to believe the accounts of such an animal pulling an elephant to its knees, or smashing the skull of an ox with a single blow of this huge weapon.

The tiger, however, in spite of his great strength, does not always have the best of it, as appears from a communication to the Field: "The following extract is from a letter lately