128 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



tsine lying dead and also the remains of elephants killed 

 by either myself or others. 



In Somaliland there are numerous hyaenas, in Assam and 

 Burma not one. I cannot credit deer and cattle demolishing 

 the enormous head and pelvis of an elephant. I instance the 

 case of a large Muckna shot by Herbert Bainbridge in Assam, 

 which was in evidence for about eight years, although shot in 

 a vast plain, far away from all civilization and subject yearly 

 to inundation in the rains and to fire in the dry weather. 

 Why should not deer, of which there were plenty about, and 

 buffaloes which roam about in herds, have demolished those 

 remains like the tame cattle and koodoos are supposed to 

 have done in Somaliland ? If the bones are eaten, what 

 becomes of the tusks ? these would be a tough morsel, and 

 could not be demolished at a sitting. Why has not a 

 gnawed one ever been found? The truth is, we are all 

 in the dark on these subjects, and theories are founded on 

 conjectures. 



Elephants are subject to many diseases, the worst being 

 Zurbad, a dropsical swelling which appears generally first 

 under the belly ; if taken in time the animal may be tempor- 

 arily cured, but the disease is sure to return and kill. It also 

 seems infectious ; the best thing to be done is to sell the beast 

 off for anything you can get for him. In Sport in British 

 Burma I gave the contents of a treatise by Dr. Gilchrist of 

 the Madras Army of the diseases elephants are subject to and 

 their treatment, but I myself don't pretend to know much 

 about them. I know a murrain broke out in the Pheel Khana 

 in Tongho, and though the elephants were scattered as fast 

 and as far apart as possible, some forty out of eighty died. 

 To make up these losses, the commissariat officer, Major 

 Mackellar, an old brother officer of mine, was directed to 

 purchase others. There is as much rascality in selling an 

 elephant as there is in selling a horse ; a vicious elephant is 

 drugged, and in that state sold as docile, whilst ginger and 

 arrack even are given to make a sleepy worn-out beast look 

 bright ; every trick is resorted to a useless brute that never 

 carries flesh when worked is fed up with massala and sugar- 

 cane, on which he speedily gets fat, and is then sold, only to 



