1 1 26 THE UNGULATES, OR HOOFED MAMMALS 



a foe, the individual that first scents him usually gives vent to a short, shrill trumpet, 

 upon which the rest stand perfectly still for a few minutes before making up 

 their minds in which direction to flee. But at other times the whole herd may make 

 off at once, without a sound being uttered. Sometimes the herd will mistake the 

 direction of the danger, and stampede straight for the sportsman, whose position is 

 then one of considerable danger; his best plan being to stand alongside a tree or 

 clump of bamboos. In cases where they are unaccustomed to the sound of firearms, 

 Mr. Sanderson states that elephants will stand huddled together, shrinking at the 

 shots, which they perhaps mistake for thunder. When first starting, they make off 

 at a rapid space, but soon settle down to a steady walk. 



In shooting single tuskers, it is advisable that the sportsman should be at his 

 work betimes, as in the case of bulls belonging to a herd they usually rejoin their 

 companions by eight or nine in the morning. When such solitary animals are feed- 

 ing, the noise they make allows of a close approach without much risk of discovery. 

 Bulls that are permanently solitary usually rest at about ten o'clock, and after that 

 time may be found asleep, either lying down, or resting against the trunk of a tree. 

 When first disturbed, one of these solitary tuskers makes off with a tremendous 

 rush, but soon subsides into a walk, when he proceeds so quietly that he may disap- 

 pear without the sportsman being in the least aware of it. 



The following account of the death of a tusker, by Sanderson, gives some idea 

 of the danger often encountered in this kind of sport. The narrator writes, that 

 having ascertained that the herd comprised about fifty head, "a shrill trumpeting 

 and crashing of bamboos about two hundred yards to our left broke the stillness, 

 and from the noise we knew it was a tusker fight. We ran toward the place where 

 the sounds of combat were increasing every moment: a deep ravine at last only 

 separated us from the combatants, and we could see the tops of the bamboos bowing 

 as the monsters bore each other backward and forward with a crashing noise in 

 their tremendous .struggles. As we ran along the bank of the nalla to find a cross- 

 ing, one elephant uttered a deep roar of pain, and crossed the nalla some forty yards 

 in advance of us, to our side. Here he commenced to detroy a bamboo clump (the 

 bamboos in these hills have a very large hollow, and are weak and comparatively 

 worthless) in sheer fury, grumbling deeply the while with rage and pain. Blood was 

 streaming from a deep stab in his left side, high up. He was a very large elephant, 

 with long and fairly thick tusks, and with much white about the forehead; the left 

 tusk was some inches shorter than the right. The opponent of this Goliath must have 

 been a monster indeed to have worsted him. An elephant fight, if the combatants 

 are well matched, frequently lasts for a day or more, a round being fought every now 

 and then. The beaten elephant retreats temporarily, followed leisurely by the other, 

 until by mutual consent they meet again. The more powerful elephant occasionally 

 keeps his foe in view till he perhaps kills him; otherwise, the beaten elephant be- 

 takes himself off for good on finding he has the worst of it. Tails are frequently 

 bitten off in these encounters. This mutilation is common among rogue elephants, 

 and among the females in a herd; in the latter case it is generally the result of 

 rivalry among themselves. The wounded tusker was evidently the temporarily- 

 beaten combatant of the occasion, and I have seldom seen such a picture of power and 



