were more or less scratched and bitten, two of them very severely. None were killed, however, and ultimately all of them recovered. Later on one of the young lions came back to the camp, and carried off a saddle, which it tore all to pieces. When day broke, the wounded lioness was shot, but the young lions had made off, and were not seen. I have given this anecdote because I was in Umtali shortly after the return of the patrol and spoke with all the men who had taken part in it, and saw the horses with their wounds still unhealed, and the remnants of the saddle that had been torn all to pieces. However, although in the interior of South Africa a certain number of natives are killed annually by hungry lions, I do not think that these animals are so destructive to human life as are tigers in India. Although cases do occur, I think it very exceptional for a lion to kill human beings for food except when driven to it by hunger. In the neighbourhood of the Pungwe river, where game of all kinds abounds, and where lions are also very numerous, the natives assured me that the lions never troubled them; but in Northern Mashonaland, where game is comparatively scarce, the lions in 1886 became so dangerous, and carried off so many women whilst they were working in their cornfields, that the few scattered families of Mashunas living in the district to the north of Lo Magondi’s deserted the country. Old lions, whose bodily powers are on the wane, are probably the most dangerous. When they can no longer catch and pull down wild animals, they approach the native villages and prey on the goats and dogs, and if they are not destroyed soon take to killing women and children. In countries where both game and lions abound, I presume that the old and weakly lions can always get a living, like the hyænas, on the remains of the carcases of animals killed by younger and more vigorous animals. As man is not the lion’s usual food, most lions would probably give way before a human being even on a dark night and allow him to pass unmolested, provided they were not hungry; but were a man to come within the ken of a hungry lion under such circumstances I should look upon him as a dead man whether he were armed or not, for the lion would probably spring upon him suddenly from behind and give him no time to make use of his weapon. Therefore I look upon it as foolhardy in the extreme to walk along a road or a native footpath, on a dark night, in countries which are infested by lions, if you can avoid doing so. You may walk twenty times at night before meeting a lion at all; and you may meet twenty lions before encountering a really hungry animal; but when you do at last meet him, he will, most assuredly, be the last lion that you will have any knowledge of in this world.