The Elephant 31 



rhinoceros ever does this, "avoids the blow with its 

 trunk and the thrust with its tusks, dashes at the ele- 

 phant's belly, and rips it up." Quite a number of writers 

 have derided and denied statements of this nature, 

 and if it were not that they have likewise scouted every- 

 thing which they did not see themselves, their dissent 

 might have more weight than it has. Everybody knows 

 that the species of rhinoceros spoken of are of all wild 

 beasts the most irritable, aggressive, and blindly fero- 

 cious ; that they will, as Selous asserts, " charge anybody 

 or anything." Apart from the question whether this 

 kind of combat ever takes place, or what the result would 

 be if it did, so many reasons exist why the trunk should 

 not be used like a flail, as here represented, that good ob- 

 servers have failed to recognize the fact that it sometimes 

 is so employed. At all events, in face of various asser- 

 tions to the effect that it never strikes with its trunk, we 

 find Andersson nearly killed in this manner. He was 

 shooting from a " skarm " ; that is to say, a trench about 

 four feet deep, twelve or fifteen long, and strongly roofed 

 except at the ends. This hiding-place and fortification 

 occupied " a narrow neck of land dividing two small 

 pools" — the water-holes of Kabis in Africa. "It was 

 a magnificent moonlight night," and the hunter soon 

 heard the beasts coming along a rocky ravine near by. 

 Directly, " an immense elephant followed by the towering 

 forms of eighteen other bulls " moved down from high 

 ground towards his hiding place, " with free, sweeping, 

 unsuspecting, and stately step." In the luminous mist 

 their colossal figures assumed gigantic proportions, " but 



