IDENTIFYING AN ELEPHANT 325 



was the animal which had been so destructive to the crops 

 of Tsaizingon and other neighbouring villages, so after all 

 I felt that he had not been wantonly slain. 



Some three or four days after the death of the elephant, 

 while tracking up a solitary bull tsine or Bos sondaicus 

 about two or three miles from camp, I came upon the large 

 tracks of another solitary bull elephant, which my hunters 

 declared from the impressions of its foot to be a certain 

 tusker which they had often come upon but failed to bag. 

 The reader will perhaps think it strange that any one would 

 be able to identify an animal by the impression of its foot. 

 It is nevertheless true, and I have often recognized the tracks 

 of certain large tuskers, muckna, solitary bull gaur, or tsine 

 from peculiarities in the formation of the huge circle-like 

 depression in the first case, and the great breadth and length 

 of the slot in the other. The tracks of female elephants, as 

 indeed in the case of gaur, tsine, are all much smaller and 

 narrower than those of the bulls. Mahouts, whose elephants 

 have strayed, are often able to distinguish from amongst 

 other tracks those of the animal they are looking for, simply 

 because their eyes are accustomed to the peculiarities of the 

 print. Burman hunters from being continually out in the 

 jungle recognize the tracks of all solitary animals, and can 

 very often tell you, if they are themselves acquainted with the 

 locality, in which cover they are most likely to be found 

 lying up during the heat of the day. Solitaires, as a rule, have 

 their own beats, and are always to be found day after day, if 

 not disturbed, within a certain area. I remember once after 

 shooting a solitary bull tsine in the neighbourhood of a 

 patch of cover, situated some four miles from my camp, and 

 for which my hunters and I were heading, as I hoped to get 

 a shot at a huge solitary bull gaur, whose tracks had for 

 several days been seen by bamboo-cutters, finding that the 

 gaur whose fresh trail we had struck had been feeding on the 

 young shoots in some open bamboo forest, and had become 

 alarmed on hearing my shots and galloped off in consequence. 

 I was awfully disappointed at the time, although I succeeded 

 two days afterwards in bagging the animal, when it had got 

 over its alarm and returned to its old haunts. I have noticed 



