One of the largest lions seen in England was caught, when very young, in Hurriana, by Gen. Watson, and was presented to George iv. The Sporting Review, in 1845, mentions the lion as an inhabitant of the territories south of Gwalior. About 1848 there was in Calcutta a lioness, more than two-thirds grown, which had been captured as a small cub in Sind. There were also then in the London Zoological Gardens a young lion and lioness from Gujerat.
Heber mentions (ii. p. 149) having been informed in the year 1825, that lions were in considerable numbers in the Saharunpur and Ludhiana districts, and that they had been killed in the northern parts of Rohilkhand, and in the neighbourhood of Moradabad and Rampur. One was killed in the Sagar district in 1851 ; and some years later, another only a few miles from the Jubbulpur and Allahabad railway.
In the Pro. Beng. As. Soc., Dr. King adduces several instances of the lion (not the maneless variety of Gujerat) having been recently shot by sportsmen in Goonah in Central India.
In the report of the great Trigonometrical Survey for 1871-72, Captain Trotter, RE., gives an account of the lion of GUjerat. It is not mane less, although the mane is considerably shorter and of lighter colour than that of the African species. It is called the Untia-bag, camel-coloured tiger, by the natives. The male is rather darker than the female, and is a little about the head and shoulders, the female being very much the same shape as the tiger. There are no diffi culties to the lion crossing to the Runn from the south of Persia. And it is supposed to be the
lion that visits India, from which the gure was taken that is used in the royal arms of gland.
The lion is frequently met with on the anks of the Tigris below Baghdad, rarely above. On the Euphrates it has been seen, almost as high as Bir. In the Siniar. and on the banks of the Khabour.
they are frequently caught by the Arabs. They abound in Khuzistan, the ancient Susiana, three or four together, and are hunted by the chiefs of the tribes inhabiting that province. In 1861, Captain Balfour, of the Indian Navy, in one day, at daybreak, saw a group of four lions. About noon, from a tell' close to the river, on the plain below, ten were counted; and in the evening, some twenty miles up the Tigris, three were seen.
Mr. Layard was given a tame lion by Osman Pasha, commandant of Hillah ; and Sir Henry Rawlinson had a tame lion for some years at Baghdad, which was much attached to him, and ultimately died at his feet, not suffering the attend ants to remove it.
The maneless lions, by the people of Babylonia, are called momin, or true believers ; the maned lions they call gabar ; the former they say will spare a Musalman if he pray, the latter never. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says the same of the green and the black crocodile of Egypt.
The Hindus, in their fifth avatar of Vishnu, recognise that deity as Nara Sinha (Nara, a man, and Sinha, a lion), a man-lion.—Madras Mail, May 12, 1873 ; G. Rawlinson, i. I). 40.