The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The _roar_ of the adult Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth. The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will, it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766, was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at the age of sixty-three. There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett, and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers, however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed. Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach, having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail, immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies, remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the Lion became more irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however, appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access; but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after