ELEPHANTS 715 



may be considered members of the genus Loxodonta. A 

 pygmy species living in West Africa has been described re- 

 cently, but it has no standing in nature, being simply a 

 young specimen of the West African elephant. The only true 

 pygmy species at present known are the fossil ones from the 

 Mediterranean basin. The genus Loxodonta was doubt- 

 less of African derivation in late Miocene time. Allied 

 forms derived from the African stock appeared in southern 

 Europe and Asia in the Pliocene, but the genus continued to 

 exist in tropical Africa, to which region it is now confined. 

 The genus is represented by a single species of which three 

 or four geographical races may be recognized by differences 

 in shape of ears and body size. Elephants were until re- 

 cently quite universally distributed over Africa, from the 

 northern borders of Abyssinia and the southern edge of 

 the Sahara Desert southward to the Cape, from sea-level 

 to the limits of vegetation on the highest mountains. At 

 the present time they have been exterminated over a con- 

 siderable part of this area and exist only in the more remote 

 and inaccessible tropical portions of the continent. 



Cape Elephant 



Loxodonta africana capensis 



Native Names: Swahili, temho ; Masai, ol-tome ; Luganda, njovu ; 

 Acholi, leati. 



Elephas capensis Cuvier, 1798, Tableau Elementaire, p. 149. 



Range. — From the Cape region of South Africa north- 

 ward throughout the East Coast and central lake region, 

 through British East Africa and Uganda to the Abyssinian 

 highlands and Somaliland; west as far as the Congo-Nile 

 watershed; at present exterminated over much of this ter- 

 ritory and confined, except where preserved, to the more 

 inaccessible parts. 



The earliest name for the African elephant was pro- 

 posed by Blumenbach in 1779, who applied to it the name 

 africajia and described the range as Middle and South 

 Africa. A decade later Cuvier described the African ele- 

 phant as a species, capensis, not being aware of Blumen- 

 bach's earlier name. In order to make Cuvier's name ap- 

 plicable for the race occurring in southern and eastern Africa, 



