in a field of maize; she fell, but was still alive. Next morning at
daybreak, at the spot where the Lioness had fallen, were blood marks,
denoting her track in the direction of a wood. After sending off the
dead Lioness. Gerard returned to his post of the preceding night. A
little after sunset the Lion roared in his lair, and continued roaring
all night. Convinced that the wounded Lioness was there, Gerard sent two
Arabs to explore the cover, but they durst not. He next evening reached
the lair, taking with him a goat, which he left with the Arabs: the
Lioness appeared. Gerard fired, and she fell without a struggle; she was
believed dead, but she got up again as though nothing was the matter,
and showed all her teeth. One of the Arabs, within six paces of her,
seeing her get up, clung to the lower branches of a tree and disappeared
like a squirrel. The Lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second
bullet piercing her heart: the first had passed out of the nape of the
neck without breaking the skull-bone.
The Lions presented by Lord Prudhoe to the British Museum are the best
sculptured representations of the animal in this country. Although the
Lion is our national hieroglyphic, and there are many statues of him,
yet not one among them all appears without a defect, which makes our
representations of him belong to the class _canis_ instead of _felis_, a
fault not found in any Egyptian sculpture.[9]
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Bonomi; "Nineveh and its Palaces," p. 249.
[9] Bonomi; "Proc. Royal Soc., Literature."
BIRD-LIFE.
"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth
them."--Matthew vi. 26.
"Free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
In plumage delicate and beautiful,
Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales,
Or loose as full-blown poppies on the gales;
With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them,
They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment."
_James Montgomery._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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