The Door Which Was
To Admit The Lion Was, Of Course, At The Opposite
End Of The Structure, But Otherwise
The whole thing
was very much on the principle of the ordinary
rat-trap, except that it was not necessary
For the
lion to seize the bait in order to send the door
clattering down. This part of the contrivance
was arranged in the following manner. A heavy
chain was secured along the top part of the
lion's doorway, the ends hanging down to the
ground on either side of the opening; and to
these were fastened, strongly secured by stout
wire, short lengths of rails placed about six inches
apart. This made a sort of flexible door which
could be packed into a small space when not in
use, and which abutted against the top of the
doorway when lifted up. The door was held in
this position by a lever made of a piece of rail,
which in turn was kept in its place by a wire
fastened to one end and passing down to a spring
concealed in the ground inside the cage. As soon
as the lion entered sufficiently far into the trap,
he would be bound to tread on the spring; his
weight on this would release the wire, and in an
instant down would come the door behind him;
and he could not push it out in any way, as it fell
into a groove between two rails firmly embedded
in the ground.
In making this trap, which cost us a lot of
work, we were rather at a loss for want of tools
to bore holes in the rails for the doorway, so as
to enable them to be fastened by the wire to the
chain.
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