74 MAMMALS

ing wildly is a most awkward back for the best of
jockeys. The lion galloped up. He and Hans were
side by side. The lion made his spring, and one heavy
paw came on the nape of the ox’s neck, and rolled
him over ; the other clutched at Hans’s arm, and tore
the sleeve of his shirt to ribbons, but did not wound
him, and there they all three lay. Hans, though he
was thrown upon his gun, contrived to wriggle it out,
the lion snarling and clutching at him all the time;
but for all that, he put both bullets into the beast’s
body, who dropped, then turned round, and limped
bleeding away into. the recesses of a broad, thick
cover ; and, of course, Hans, shaken as he was, let him
go. There were no dogs to follow him, so he was
allowed to die in peace, and subsequently his spoor
was taken up, and his remains found.’

Lions loom large when seen by the excited ex-
plorer in the dusk of the evening, but they dwindle
considerably when alongside the measuring tape. Mr.
Selous gives ten feet as the length of his largest
African lion, and from this we must deduct nearly
a yard for the tail. Indian specimens recently
measured are rather smaller, so that we shall not be
far wrong in taking the lion as under four feet in
height and about six feet in length, exclusive of his
tail—that wonderful tail which has at its tip the tuft
that surrounds the horny nail, known in fact and
fiction as the thorn with which the king of beasts
goads himself to anger.

The lioness is about a foot shorter than the male
over all—at the longest nine feet—and stands propor-
tionally lower. She has no mane, and when very