CHAPTER TWELVE.
A TALK ABOUT LIONS.
As they rode back they conversed about lions, to beguile the time.

All of them knew something about these animals; but Swartboy, who had been born and brought up in the bush, in the very midst of their haunts as it were, of course was well acquainted with their habits--ay, far better than Monsieur Buffon himself.
To describe the personal appearance of a lion would be to waste words.
Every one of my readers must know the lion by sight, either from having seen one in a zoological collection, or the stuffed skin of one in a museum.

Every one knows the form of the animal, and his great shaggy mane.

Every one knows, moreover, that the lioness is without this appendage, and in shape and size differs considerably from the male.
Though there are not two _species_ of lions, there are what are termed _varieties_, but these differ very little from each other--far less than the varieties of most other animals.
There are seven acknowledged varieties.

The Barbary lion, the lion of Senegal, the Indian lion, the Persian, the yellow Cape, the black Cape, and the maneless lion.
The difference among these animals is not so great, but that at a glance any one may tell they were all of one species and kind.