ELEPHANT FRIENDS AND FOES 21 
now, the African elephant is the most fascinating, 
and that man, for all the thousands of years he has 
known of elephants, knows mighty little about him. 
I am speaking only of the African elephant. He has 
not been domesticated as his Indian cousin has. The 
two are different in size and different in shape and 
different in habits. The low point of an African 
elephant’s back line is the highest point of that of the 
Indian elephant. The African elephant’s ears and 
_ tusks are larger, and his tusks usually spread wider 
at the points instead of coming together. Unless 
one studies him in his native haunts, one cannot get 
to know him. His disposition is held to be wilder 
than that of the Indian elephant, but the infrequency 
of his appearance in circuses and in zodlogical parks 
may be attributed to the ease with which tamed ele- 
phants may be obtained from India rather than to 
a difference of temper in the two beasts. An African 
elephant at Washington and one in the Bronx zo- 
ological park are the only ones I know of in this coun- 
try, and no animal in captivity can give one more 
than a slight idea of his natural habits in his jungle 
home. 
Very few people have studied African elephants 
in the field. Ninety-five per cent. of those who have 
followed them have been purely hunters and their 
desire has been, not to study, but to shoot—to see the 
elephant the shortest possible time. Time to judge 
the ivories and get a bead on the brain was all that 
they wanted. Of other elephant knowledge all that 
they needed was the simple facts of how to follow and 
