336 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



that there are too many elephants, and it must be ad- 

 mitted that they do an enormous amount of damage 

 in the paddy fields once they find their way thither. 

 In 1886 a herd of twenty or twenty-five committed 

 such depredations in a district of Irrawaddy Division 

 that an official invitation was sent to the superinten- 

 dent of kheddah operations, then in the Garrow Hills, 

 to come down and catch them. That officer de- 

 clined, on the ground that there were more elephants 

 than he could deal with in the region receiving his 

 attention at the time ; but he offered the services of 

 a party armed with four-bores, which, if I remember 

 rightly, were not accepted. The incident may help 

 to allay the anxiety of those who derive a melancholy 

 satisfaction from the compilation of figures to de- 

 monstrate the limitations of the elephant as a living 

 species. In Burmah, at any rate, there is no danger 

 of his early extinction. 



I have never shot an elephant not from want of 

 opportunity, nor from respect of the law (or fear of 

 being fined, which amounts to the same thing), but 

 because the animal at home failed to inspire me with 

 the thirst for blood which drags one out of bed at 

 four o'clock on a dark morning, to trudge miles 

 along rough and thorny tracks through a continual 

 shower bath for the chance of a shot at bison. It 

 did not seem worth killing a beast so big for so 

 commonplace a trophy as a pair of average tusks, 

 whose merits would be estimated by their market 

 value in depreciated rupees. What one's views might 

 have been within range of a tusker with six-foot 



