318 EXTINCT AND* VANISHING MAMMALS 



long ago retreated from the borders of the Red Sea. Swayne wrote 

 a quarter of a century or so ago: "There is practically no elephant 

 shooting to be got in Somaliland north of the Haud Plateau, or in 

 the Haud, at the present time. In the gorges which descend from 

 the highlands of Abyssinia to Ogaden in the country about the 

 head-waters of the Webbi Shabeyleh and Juba Rivers there are 

 still plenty of elephant. A few herds, it is believed, wander down 

 those river valleys to the Marehan Country far to the south-east 

 of Berbera." A certain amount of ivory-hunting by natives may 

 keep these herds in check. But recent travelers up the Nile report 

 large numbers of elephants in the practically impenetrable papyrus 

 swamps of "the Sudd" where they will doubtless find sanctuary for 

 a long period to come. Between this area and Uganda there are 

 large numbers of elephants, and in the Kenya forests and thorn- 

 bush a good many still survive. 



For the purposes of the present report, chief interest centers in the 

 elephant of South Africa, which nowadays with increasing settle- 

 ment of this part of the continent comes into close association with 

 white men and has had to suffer in consequence. The following brief 

 notes are given in summary from Shortridge (1934, vol. 1, p. 362) and 

 W. L. Sclater (1900) . This, the typical race of African Elephant, at 

 present seems to be characterized in part by its rather short stout 

 tusks as compared with the other Bush Elephants, but how far this 

 may have been due to the process of selecting largest tusks and elimi- 

 nating these animals in ivory hunting is not clear. "In the days of 

 van Riebeck (1653) elephant were plentiful as far south as the Cape 

 Peninsula," but by the beginning of the next century seem to have 

 become rare, for according to Theal the last one shot in this region 

 was killed "just beyond Cape Flats in 1702; the expedition of Cap- 

 tain Hop, in 1761, found plenty just north of the Oliphant River 

 in what is now the district of Clanwilliam, while in the eastern half 

 of the Colony, elephant hunting was regularly pursued till about 

 1830. ... In Natal a few survived till 1860; in the north the 

 hunters of the early part of the century made large bags near 

 Kuruman ; Harris in 1836 shot chiefly in Magaliesberg of the western 

 Transvaal; Gordon Gumming in 1846 in Sechele's country in 

 northern Bechuanaland, and Livingstone and Baldwin, in 1849 and 

 1858, found elephants innumerable on the Botletli River and near 

 Lake Ngami, and finally Selous' hunting ground in the seventies 

 and early eighties was in what is now Matabeleland and Mashona- 

 land." Elephants were formerly so plentiful in the southeastern part 

 of the Cape that an important ivory market was established in 1824 

 at Fort Willshire. After 1860, however, the herds in the Knysna 

 Forest and the Addo Bush were placed under government protection. 

 The last elephant in Zululand was said to have been a solitary bull, 



