284 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



importance which attached in the eyes of the mightiest 

 monarchs of the then world to the chase and the trophies 

 of this great strange beast. The ancient civilization of 

 India boasts as one of its achievements the taming of the 

 elephant; and in the ancient lore of that civilization the 

 elephant plays a distinguished part. 



The elephant is unique among the beasts of great bulk 

 in the fact that his growth in size has been accompanied by 

 growth in brain power. With other beasts growth in bulk 

 of body has not been accompanied by similar growth of 

 mind. Indeed sometimes there seems to have been mental 

 retrogression. The rhinoceros, in several different forms, 

 is found in the same regions as the elephant, and in one of 

 its forms it is in point of size second only to the elephant 

 among terrestrial animals. Seemingly the ancestors of the 

 two creatures, in that period, separated from us by un- 

 counted hundreds of thousands of years, which we may con- 

 veniently designate as late miocene or early pliocene, were 

 substantially equal in brain development. But in one case 

 increase in bulk seems to have induced lethargy and atrophy 

 of brain power, while in the other case brain and body have 

 both grown. At any rate the elephant is now one of the 

 wisest and the rhinoceros one of the stupidest of big mam- 

 mals. In consequence the elephant outlasts the rhino, 

 although he is the largest, carries infinitely more valuable 

 spoils, and is far more eagerly and persistently hunted. 

 Both animals wandered freely over the open country of East 

 Africa thirty years ago. But the elephant learns by ex- 

 perience infinitely more readily than the rhinoceros. As a 

 rule, the former no longer lives in the open plains, and in 

 many places now even crosses them if possible only at night. 

 But those rhinoceros which formerly dwelt in the plains for 

 the most part continued to dwell there until killed out. So 

 it is at the present day. Not the most foolish elephant would 

 under similar conditions behave as the rhinos that we studied 

 and hunted by Kilimakiu and in the Sotik behaved. No 

 elephant, in regions where they have been much persecuted 



