The lion, undoubtedly, owes his title of “king of beasts” to the flowing mane with which his head and fore-quarters are adorned, as this confers upon him a dignity and grandeur of appearance entirely lacking in his maneless partner. Without his mane it is, indeed, more than questionable whether a lion would not be outclassed in style by a tiger. As it is, however, the lion, at all events so far as appearance goes, has an undisputed claim to his royal title; the magnificent mien of his draped head and shoulders, his bold, imperious eye, the powerful build of his lithe body, and his resounding roar of defiance, presenting the very ideal of supreme strength and sovereignty. The tawny coat, which varies in tint from greyish or yellowish brown to yellow, is evidently intended to harmonise with the dry grasses and the yellow sand of the semi-desert tracts which form the favourite haunts of the lion; and this is confirmed by the fact that the newborn cubs are mottled with dark brown, thus indicating their descent from a species with a mottled or spotted coat adapted to a different environment. Indeed, Somali lions frequently retain traces of these spots, more especially in the female; and in German East Africa there exists a race of the lion in which both sexes are more or less fully and distinctly spotted. In popular estimation the lion is inseparably connected with Africa, where it formerly ranged from one end of the continent to the other, although it has long since disappeared from most parts of Tunis and Algeria, as well as from Cape Colony. As a matter of fact, _Felis leo_ is as much an Asiatic as an African animal; while in the time of Xenophon it was probably found so far west as Thrace and Macedonia. Earlier still, that is to say in prehistoric times, its range included the greater part of temperate Europe, not excepting the British Isles. Unlike the tiger, however, the lion never inhabited the countries to the east of the Bay of Bengal, nor penetrated to the swamps of Lower Bengal itself, which are unsuited to its habits. Even so late as the Mutiny, lions were to be met with over a considerable tract in central India; although they are nowadays restricted to that district of Kathiawar, known as the Gir, where they survive only by protection. In the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, as well as in parts of Persia, lions are still to be met with; but how numerous they are in these countries is difficult to ascertain.