The wild lion of Southern Africa seldom presents the majestic appearance of the picture-book animal, because as a rule he does not carry a long shaggy mane, like the lions one often sees in menageries. Occasionally, however, one sees a wild lion with a fine full dark mane, and then he is a magnificent animal, and one of the noblest prizes that can fall to the sportsman’s rifle. I have been much struck by the beauty of the manes of many of the lions shot by Colonel Arthur Paget, Lord Wolverton, Lord Delamere and other sportsmen in Somaliland, and I think there can be no doubt that in that part of Africa the lions grow better manes on an average than in South Africa. The dark parts are, too, of a deeper black. But I have not yet seen a lion’s skin from Somaliland with so full a mane as in the three best skins I have seen from South Africa. None of these three splendid animals were, alas! shot by myself. One was killed by the natives in Matabeleland and its skin given me by Lo Bengula, and I still have it in my possession; the second was killed at the Umfuli river in Mashonaland by my friend Cornelis van Rooyen, and the third two years ago within a few miles of the same spot by Hans Lee, the young Boer hunter who accompanied Lord Randolph Churchill on his recent expedition to South Africa. Although I have seen a very large number of skins of wild lions, I have never yet seen one with long hair growing on the belly as is so common in menagerie lions and invariable in the picture-book animal. A wild lion with a very fine mane will have a tuft of long hair in the arm-pit, another on the elbow, and in some cases a tuft in the flank, but the hair of the belly is always short and close, as on the rest of the body. In the great majority of cases the mane of the wild lion is simply a ruff round the neck with an extension down the back between the shoulders. In very rare and exceptional cases the angle formed between the end of this extension and the point of the shoulder is covered with mane, as it is very commonly in the menagerie lion; but, as a rule, the whole shoulder of the wild lion is devoid of mane. Very often a large heavy full-grown male lion, a splendid animal in strength and symmetry, will have scarcely any mane at all, and his skin is not then a handsome trophy.