fight, while
still uninjured, before his perhaps badly wounded antagonist. The casual
observer might-and often does-say that all bears are cowardly, all bucks
are easily killed, or the reverse, according as the god of chance has
treated him to one spectacle or the other. As well try to generalize
on the human race-as is a certain ecclesiastical habit-that all men are
vile or noble, dishonest or upright, wise or foolish.

The higher we go in the scale the truer this individualism holds. We
are forced to reason not from the bulk of observations, but from their
averages. If we find ten bucks who will go a mile wounded to two who
succumb in their tracks from similar hurts, we are justified in saying
tentatively that the species is tenacious of life. But as experience
broadens we may modify that statement; for strange indeed are runs of
luck.

For this reason a good deal of the wise conclusion we read in
sportsmen's narratives is worth very little. Few men have experience
enough with lions to rise to averages through the possibilities of luck.
ESPECIALLY is this true of lions. No beast that roams seems to go more
by luck than felis leo. Good hunters may search for years without seeing
hide nor hair of one of the beasts. Selous, one of the greatest, went to
East Africa for the express purpose of getting some of the fine beasts
there, hunted six weeks and saw none. Holmes of the Escarpment has lived
in the country six years, has hunted a great deal and has yet to kill
his first. One of the railroad officials has for years gone up and down
the Uganda Railway on his handcar, his rifle ready in hopes of the lion
that never appeared; though many are there seen by those with better
fortune. Bronson hunted desperately for this great prize, but failed.
Rainsford shot no lions his first trip, and ran into them only three
years later. Read Abel Chapman's description of his continued bad luck
at even seeing the beasts. MacMillan, after five years' unbroken good
fortune, has in the last two years failed to kill a lion, although he
has made many trips for the purpose. F. told me he followed every rumour
of a lion for two years before he got one. Again, one may hear the most
marvellous of yarns the other way about-of the German who shot one from
the train on the way up from Mombasa; of the young English tenderfoot
who, the first day out, came on three asleep, across a river, and potted
the lot; and so on. The point is, that in the case of