ELEPHANT HUNTING 



241 



numbers at certain places, where only a few bulls are ever 

 found. Where undisturbed elephant rest, and wander 

 about at all times of the day and night, and feed without 

 much regard to fixed hours. Morning or evening, noon or 

 midnight, the herd may be on the move, or its members 

 may be resting; yet, during the hottest hours of noon they 

 seldom feed, and ordinarily stand almost still, resting for 

 elephant very rarely lie down unless sick. Where they are 

 afraid of man, their only enemy, they come out to feed in 

 thinly forested plains, or cultivated fields, when they do so 

 at all, only at night, and before daybreak move back into 

 the forest to rest. Elsewhere they sometimes spend the day 

 in the open, in grass or low bush. Where we were, at this 

 time, on Kenia, the elephants sometimes moved down at 

 night to feed in the shambas, at the expense of the crops 

 of the natives, and sometimes stayed in the forest, feeding 

 by day or night on the branches they tore off the trees, or, 

 occasionally, on the roots they grubbed up with their tusks. 

 They work vast havoc among the young or small growth of 

 a forest, and the readiness with which they uproot, overturn, 

 or break off medium sized trees conveys a striking impres- 

 sion of their enormous strength. I have seen a tree a foot 

 in diameter thus uprooted and overturned. 



The African elephant has never, like his Indian kin 



- ^EBEfc^a i i 



man, been trained to man's use. There is still hope that 

 the feat may be performed; but hitherto its probable eco- 

 nomic usefulness has for various reasons seemed so ques- 

 tionable that there has been scant encouragement to un- 

 dergo the necessary expense and labor. Up to the present 

 time the African elephant has yielded only his ivory as an 

 asset of value. This, however, has been of such great value 



