274 Naturalist at Large 



into a real attraction for visitors. At present few people 

 realize that it exists at all. Our next stop was Port Elizabeth, 

 where the ladies of the party, being excellent sailors, 

 which I am not, went forty miles offshore to Bird Island, 

 their visit luckily coinciding with one of the semiannual 

 trips of the lighthouse tender. They saw a wonderful show 

 of gannets, but only a few of the penguins which they were 

 especially hopeful of seeing. The lighthouse keeper told 

 Rosamond that within a few days he would look out from 

 his house and instead of seeing the whole island snow-white 

 with gannets they would all be gone, and the penguins 

 would be swarming ashore to take up the same nesting 

 ground. 



While the family were at Bird Island Mr. Herbert Lang, 

 who had come from Pretoria to join us, and I went out to 

 the Addu Bush. This park, recently established, shelters 

 the last remnant of the true South African elephant. There 

 are also bush buck, buffalo, and various small antelope, but 

 it was established especially to preserve the few remaining 

 individuals of the heavy-bodied, short-legged cape elephant, 

 characterized by very short and very thick tusks. On ac- 

 count of the tendency to wander, these elephants have given 

 a great deal of trouble, especially to the orange growers, 

 whose groves adjoin their range. A few years ago Major 

 Pretorius, a famous Boer hunter, was commissioned to kUl 

 off all the elephants. He almost succeeded in doing this be- 

 fore the outcry of popular indignation put a stop to the 

 slaughter. The Reserve has now been somewhat enlarged, 

 I am told, and the elephants are kept in control with rockets 

 and flares and by persuading the orange growers to dump 

 all their cull oranges in a certain place where the elephants 



