288 COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 



forest for the shelter of this beast. Provided the most religious care — 

 such care is effectual in India — was taken of the females and voung, there 

 is no reason why a certain number of male elephants should not be killed 

 yearly by designated agents of the Government, and their ivory be sold 

 to merchants as part of the Protectorate revenues. I see no reason whatever 

 now why the female African elephant should not be tamed and used as 

 a transport animal. For this purpose it might eventually prove advisable 

 to import trained Indian females, who might assist in teaching the young 

 captured Africans. The experiments I have tried myself in tlie way of 

 rearing baby elephants who had not yet been weaned from their mothers 

 proved imsuccessful, as apparently it is impossible to rear any African 

 elephant on cows' milk. Perhaps, however, my four failures in this 

 respect need not be held to discourage other experiments. In any case, 

 the late Mr. Eichard Baile showed that it was possible for natives to 

 capture young elephants able to subsist on leaves and grass, yet not so old 

 as to be utterly unmanageable or untamable. It mny be along this line that 

 the next experiments will be made, and imported female Indian elephants 

 might be of use in taming the newly captured elephants. In time, when 

 African elephants had been trained to keddah work, the whole system of 

 capturing, taming, and training elephants might be conducted on Indian 

 lines. If after many years of trial the African elephant is pronounced to 

 be hopeless as a domestic animal (and it should be remembered that most 

 Tnale African elephants in captivity have shown them.selves to be hopeles^^ly 

 savage), then at least for its magnificent ivory the creature is worth 

 preserving as an asset to the State. If the Indian elephant shows himself 

 to be more docile than the African ele[)hant, it must be remembered, 

 on the other hand, that he is of very little value for his ivory. 



Zebras of two kinds (the magnificent Grevyi and the equally handsome 

 but smaller Grant's zebra) exist in the Uganda Protectorate in countless 

 swarms. The foals are easily captured by the natives, and can be reared 

 by means of asses as foster-mothers, the ass lieing one of the commonest and 

 cheapest of domestic auimals, at any rate over the eastern parts of the 

 Uganda Protectorate. These fine large asses, in fact (which are simply the 

 Nubian ass slightly domesticated), might of themselves be an article of ex})ort. 

 Giraffes and most of the larger African antelopes should be strictly 

 preserved, but when they increased unduly in numbers specimens of them 

 might be captured for sale and transmission to zoological gardens. Where 

 any of these animals are really found in excess, and have to be tliinned, 

 it must be remembered that their hides are almost always of value 

 commercially. 



Either there is no true tsetse fly anywhere in the Uganda Protectorate 

 or it is not able to obtain and introduce into the bodies of domestic animals 



