54 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
shot a bull elephant and stood watching the herd 
disappear, when a cow came down from behind, 
unheard and unseen, ran her tusk clear through him 
and, with a toss of her head, threw him into the bush 
and went on. Longdon lived four days. 
But although the elephant is a terrible fighter in 
his own defence when attacked by man, that is not 
his chief characteristic. The things that stick in my 
mind are his sagacity, his versatility, and a certain 
comradeship which I have never noticed to the same 
degree in other animals. I like to think of the picture 
of the two old bulls helping along their comrade 
wounded by Major Harrison’s gun; to think of several 
instances I have seen of a phenomenon, which I am 
sure is not accidental, when the young and husky 
elephants formed the outer ring of a group protecting 
the older ones from the scented danger. I like to think 
back to the day I saw the group of baby elephants 
playing with a great ball of baked dirt two and a half 
feet in diameter which, in their playing, they rolled 
for more than half a mile, and the playfulness with 
which this same group teased the babies of a herd of 
buffalo until the cow buffaloes chased them off. I 
think, too, of the extraordinary fact that I have never 
heard or seen African elephants fighting each other. 
They have no enemy but man and are at peace 
amongst themselves. 
It is my friend the elephant that I hope to perpetu- 
ate in the central group in the Roosevelt African Hall 
as it is now planned for the American Museum of 
Natural History—a hall with groups of African ani- 
