-^ A Dying Race of Giants 



graphs, taken in the wilderness, of elephants which have 

 not been shot at — photographs depicting for us the African 

 elephant in its native wilds. When he does, I shall 

 " eive him best " ! 



The elephant is no longer to be found anywhere in 

 its original numbers. It is found most frequently in the 

 desert places between Abyssinia and the Nile and the Galla 

 country, or in the inaccessible parts of the Congo, on 

 the Albert Nyanza, and in the hinterlands of Nigeria and 

 the Gold Coast. But in the vicinity of the Victoria 

 Nyanza things have changed greatly. Richard Kandt 

 tells us that a single elephant-hunter, a Dane, who after- 

 wards succumbed to the climate, alone slaughtered hundreds 

 in the course of years. 



According to experts in this field of knowledge, some 

 of the huge animals of prehistoric days disappeared in a 

 quite brief space of time from the earth's surface. But 

 we cannot explain why beasts so well qualified to defend 

 themselves should so speedily cease to exist. However 

 that may be, the fate of the still existing African elephant 

 appears to me tragic. At one time elephants of different 

 kinds dwelt in our own country.^ Remains of the 

 closely related mammoth, with its long hair adapted to a 

 northern climate, are sometimes excavated from the ice in 

 Siberia. Thus we obtain information about its kind of 

 food, for remnants of food well preserved by the intense 



1 Little elephants only a yard high used to inhabit Malta, and there 

 still lives, according to Hagenbeck, the experienced zoologist of 

 Hamburg, a dwarf species of elephant in yet unexplored districts of 

 West Africa. 



