The lioness has no mane; is smaller, and more slender in her proportions than the male; she carries her head even with the line of her back, and wants the majestic courage of the lion, but she is more agile. Her temper is more irritable, and Mr. Gordon Cumming says:--"She is more dangerous before she has been a mother; yet every vestige of tameness or docility vanishes when she _is_ a mother, and she is then in a constant state of excitement, getting into the most violent fury if any one should attempt to touch her cubs." The story of the lioness which one night attacked one of the horses of the Exeter mail has been told so many different ways, that I am glad to copy the correct account from Captain Brown's "Popular Natural History":--"She had made her escape from a travelling Menagerie, on its way to Salisbury fair, and suddenly seized one of the leading horses. This, of course, produced great alarm and confusion, which was not lessened by perceiving what the enemy was; and two inside passengers took refuge in a house. A large mastiff attacked the intruder, upon which she quited the horse, and turned upon him; he fled, but she pursued and killed him, after running forty yards. On the alarm being given, her keepers went after her, till she took refuge under a granary, with the dog still within her teeth. They barricaded her there to prevent her escape, and she roared there so loudly, that she was heard half a mile off. She was afterwards secured and taken to her den; and of course her adventure increased the celebrity of the menagerie to which she belonged. Before this happened, she was considered as very tame, and never had given any signs of ferocity; she therefore affords another example, that it is not safe to trust these animals: of course the poor horse was dreadfully torn, and the expressions of his agony were most affecting; the lioness, however, had missed the vital parts."