OCR Text |
Show 1904.] FIELD NATURAL HISTORY OF THE LION. 265 daytime unless roused from his lair in the gloom of some dense clump of bush or reed-bed-is quite erroneous. It is the fact that Lions are heard very much more at night than in daytime ; nevertheless they are largely diurnal as well, though usually silent. I have heard Lions roaring at noon on one or two occasions, and I have many times heard them as late as an hour or more after sunrise, and as early in the evening as an hour or more before sunset. The usual time is at sunset and a little after, and more especially about dawn in the early morning and thence onwards until broad daylight. I have seen Lions at all times of day, under all sorts of conditions, in all sorts of country, in all sorts of weather from misty rain to the hottest noonday sun of the tropics. It is certainly not my experience that the Lion's habit is to hide himself in dark cover in the daytime-far from it. Other circumstances being equal, he likes open country and sunlight, and goes about and lies out in it freely, nothing being more to his liking than some coign of vantage commanding a view of the neighbourhood, where he can stretch himself out and survey the prospect. I have seen a Lioness and three cubs lying out on a river sancl-spit in Henga in the full glare of the early afternoon tropical sun, stretched out on her belly, with her cubs crawling about her back and neck and tumbling over on to the sand. On another occasion about 10 a .m ., also in Henga, I saw a Lioness sitting up on her haunches on a flat-topped ant-hill, watching and listening to my men talking and laughing as they were skinning an Impala shot half an hour previously. The same instant as I made her out and levelled my glasses on her at a distance of some 300 yards, she slunk down behind the ant-hill-melting away, as it were, in the endeavour to make her movement as unnoticeable as possible. I have seen a Lioness crossing the bare scorching lava-covered plain intervening between the East-Africa and Uganda Protectorates in the fierce heat of noon at midsummer, with the heat radiating in lambent tongues from the ground, giving her the appearance of being enveloped in fire. Nothing had disturbed her, as this country was uninhabited by man; she was making her way to the water. On another occasion I saw three half-grown cubs near the same spot in the early afternoon, in the hottest sunlight, playing about in the open on the banks of the stream. Once, in Henga, I came across a troup of five Lions on the move at noonday. It had been raining about an hour before, but the sun was then out in all its power of midsummer, as they crossed from open country to go into the scrub on the banks of the Lunyina Ptiver. In Henga, in 1893, about an hour after sunrise in the hottest time in all the year, a full-grown dark-maned Lion passed down the valley below me following a game-track at a long striding walk, throwing up his head and roaring at intervals as he went, |