732 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



phant, a big bull, and not far from where Akeley was nearly 

 killed by another bull]. We got a single bull elephant stand- 

 ing about 15 yards off. I motioned my man to shoot, but 

 he was decidedly jumpy over the business and made some 

 noise. Round swung our friend and started to charge right 

 on us. My companion let drive with one barrel and man- 

 aged to hit one of the outspread ears! He had waited so 

 long that it didn't give me a fair chance, but one shot of the 

 'Roosevelt gun' brought him down dead as a nail barely 

 ten yards from me. On this occasion there was absolutely 

 no chance of escape as we could not move a step in any direc- 

 tion in the mass of tangled vegetation." 



The coloration of the Cape elephant is decidedly of a 

 gray cast, usually some shade of smoke-gray or light olive- 

 gray, and is uniform in tint over the whole body except in 

 the region of the axillae, groins, and lips, where a pinkish 

 tone usually manifests itself. The calves are a lighter and 

 purer gray than the adults. The coloration of the ele- 

 phant, however, is not dependent upon the color of the 

 actual skin, as in other pachyderms, but upon a roughened 

 layer of dead epidermis which coats the skin. This dead 

 epidermal layer is heaviest upon the crown of the head and 

 over the back, where it is visible as a caked or flaking mass 

 of dried grayish tissue. The tanned skins of elephants or 

 the mounted specimens, as a rule, do not show the layer of 

 dead epidermis, which is usually lost in the tanning process 

 to which the skins are subjected, and such skins are on this 

 account brighter or clearer in color and quite olivaceous- 

 gray in tint. Albino specimens, such as the so-called white 

 elephants occasionally found in India, are not known in 

 Africa. 



The body of the East African elephant is clothed every- 

 where by hair, but the individual hairs are so widely scat- 

 tered and so short that they are only evident upon close 

 scrutiny of the skin. Over the greater part of the dorsal 

 surface the individual hairs stand half an inch or an inch 



