HABITS IN SOUTH AFRICA 1 3 



simply keeping on the line of the trees that had been thus peeled. 

 Only the thin inner layer of the bark, used for the manufacture of 

 rope and string by the natives, and having a sweet taste, is eaten by 

 the elephants. Small trees of 2 or 3 inches in diameter the elephants 

 break down with their trunks, but larger trees they butt down. 

 Pushing with the thick part of the trunk, they get the tree on the 

 swing, giving way as it swings towards them, and following it up as it 

 goes back, till it finally yields. During the dry season fruit-bearing 

 trees over a foot in diameter are often broken clean off at a height of 

 2 or 3 feet from the ground ; while in the rainy season, when the soil 

 is soaked and the roots of certain kinds have little hold in the ground, 

 trees of much larger dimensions are overthrown. On one occasion I 

 saw a young bull elephant push down an umglosi tree (a species 

 bearing a sweet-tasted fruit), when all the young elephants in the herd 

 immediately rushed up and commenced to pick off the fruit with their 

 trunks, and conveyed them one by one as quickly as possible to their 

 mouths. 



" South African elephants not unfrequently collected in herds of from 

 one to four hundred individuals ; these large herds being composed 

 almost exclusively of cows and calves with a certain number of young 

 bulls. Old bulls seldom herd with the cows, although I have seen 

 apparently full-grown bulls amongst a herd of cows, and once when 

 following the tracks of eight or ten old bulls, came up with them 

 standing close to a troop of cows and calves. As a rule, old bulls 

 keep to themselves, and may be seen either singly, or in parties of two 

 or three up to a dozen together. Solitary bulls are not more vicious 

 than others, and really big old bulls are usually less savage than cows 

 and young bulls. 



" In South Africa elephants seem fond of climbing to the top of 

 hills, often over very broken rocky ground, but do most of their 

 climbing at night. Uphill they go at a slow pace, but in descending 

 they come down like an avalanche when frightened or angry, and will 

 negotiate steep places by sitting down and sliding on their haunches. 

 Elephants are good swimmers, and thirty years ago it was common 

 for them to cross the Zambesi by night between the Victoria Falls 

 and the mouth of the Chobi. According to native accounts, they 

 swim with their heads and part of their tusks above water. 



" Young South African elephants have a number of long coarse 

 hairs round the aperture of the ear, which gradually disappear as they 

 grow up. Like rhinoceros calves, young elephants will remain by the 

 carcases of their slaughtered dams, when they will charge anything 



