Directions:(1-10) Read the passage carefully and answer the questions given.

The lion is known as the King of Beasts; though modern travellers have done much to rob him of the homage that he once received. Like a human being who has been too much lionized, he suffers from the detractions which are excited by his pre-eminence. He is found chiefly in India and Africa, though he once had a more extended range. He was well known to the Greeks, and appears in both their poetry and history. Homer celebrates him, and according to Herodotus he exploited himself by attacking the camels of the army of Xerxes. His noble appearance is said to be responsible for the popular ideal of his character, which travellers and naturalists declare to be minus the magnanimous and generous qualities with which it was at one time credited.

In judging of the lion’s character it is important to remember that he belongs to the cat family, and that his virtues and vices are naturally of the cat kind. “The lion seldom runs,” says the author of “Tales of Animals.” “He either walks or creeps, or, for a short distance, advances rapidly by great bounds. It is evident, therefore, that he must seize his prey by stealth; that he is not fitted for an open attack; and that his character is necessarily that of great power, united to considerable skill and cunning in its exercise.” Again, the lion, as well as others of the cat tribe, takes his prey at night; and it is necessary, therefore, that he should have peculiar organs of vision. In all those animals which seek their food in the dark, the eye is usually of a large size, to admit a great number of rays. This peculiar kind of eye, therefore, is necessary to the Lion to perceive his prey, and he creeps towards it with a certainty which nothing but this distinct nocturnal vision could give.” Men who hunt the lion in the daytime, when he is usually sleeping off the effects of a hearty meal, and who awaken him in a surprised and dazed condition when his cat-like eyes cannot bear the blaze of the sun, ought not to be surprised if he tries to postpone fighting until a more convenient season. Nor can he be said to be less noble because he only fights when it is necessary to procure food, to protect his young, and to defend himself. A veritable Ulysses among the beasts he is ready to fight if needs be, but unless urged by hunger, or attacked by the hunter, he does not seem to bear any particular malice against mankind.

“It is singular,” says Sparrman, “that the lion, which, according to many, always kills his prey immediately if it belongs to the brute creation, is reported, frequently, although provoked, to content himself with merely wounding the human species; or, at least, to wait some time before he gives the fatal blow to the unhappy victim he has got under him. A farmer, who the year before had the misfortune to be a spectator of a lion seizing two of his oxen, at the very instant he had taken them out of the waggon, told me that they immediately fell down dead upon the spot, close to each other; though, upon examining the carcasses afterwards, it appeared that their backs only had been broken. In several places through which I passed, they mentioned to me by name a father and his two sons, who were said to be still living, and who, being on foot near a river on their estate, in search of a lion, this latter had rushed out upon them, and thrown one of them under his feet. The two others, however, had time enough to shoot the lion dead upon the spot, which had lain almost across the youth, so nearly and dearly related to them, without having done him any particular hurt. I myself saw, near the upper part of Duyvenhoek River, an elderly Hottentot who, at that time (his wounds being still open), bore under one eye, and underneath his cheek bone the ghastly marks of the bite of a lion, which did not think it worth his while to give him any other chastisement for having, together with his master (whom I also knew), and several other Christians, hunted him with great intrepidity, though without success. The conversation ran everywhere in this part of the country upon one Bota, a farmer and captain in the militia, who had lain for some time under a lion, and had received several bruises from the beast, having been at the same time a good deal bitten by him in one arm, as a token to remember him by; but, upon the whole, had, in a manner, had his life given him by this noble animal. The man was said then to be living in the district of Artaquaskloof.”

1. According to the passage, which of the following is TRUE about the lion?