“A very extraordinary malformation, or defect, has frequently occurred among Lions produced during the last thirty years, in the Regent’s Park. This imperfection consists in the roof of the mouth being open. The palatal bones do not meet; the animal, is, therefore, unable to suck, and consequently always dies. This abnormal condition has not been confined to the young of any one pair of Lions, but many Lions that have died in the Zoological Gardens, and not in any way related to each other, have, from time to time, produced these malformed young, the cause of which appears to me quite unaccountable.” Lion-hunting has not yet become, like Tiger-hunting, a regularly organised sport, entered upon at a particular season by large parties of Europeans, who think far more of the fun of the thing than of ridding the world of destroying beasts. The sport of Lion-hunting, on the other hand, is only undertaken by an individual traveller, now and then, who has to take nearly the whole of the danger on his own shoulders, and is quite without the extraneous aids afforded by regiments of Elephant-mounted fellow-hunters, and armies of beaters. The rest of the Lion-killing is done, not for sport, but for use, to get rid of a beast which has decimated flocks, and put friends and neighbours to a cruel death. In all parts where the Lion is found, the natives have one or more ways of trying to get rid of him: sometimes meeting him in open fight, sometimes destroying him in a more underhand manner, by pitfalls, or the like. Of all methods, that which is attended with the least danger is the ditch, or pitfall, of the Arabs of Algeria. This is a pit four or five yards broad, and ten deep, dug in the middle of the _douar_, or small encampment of from ten to twenty tents, in which the Arabs live during the winter. The whole douar is surrounded by a hedge, two or three yards in height, and a lesser hedge is placed round the pit to prevent the cattle falling into it; the latter being kept loose within the encampment to attract Lions by their scent and their cries. When the desirable effect is attained, and a Lion has made up his mind to take toll from the flock he hears bleating within the enclosure, he leaps the hedge with one of his tremendous bounds, and, the ditch being a less distance from the hedge than the horizontal range of his leap, falls headlong into the trap prepared for him, from which, owing to its depth, and the fact that it is made narrower above than below, his most frantic efforts can never succeed in extricating him.