168 ELEPHANTS. 



taint will take to reach them ; the current of air is 

 sometimes so faint that it barely travels at the rate of 

 two miles in the hour. Experiments of this kind are 

 always interesting, and knowledge thus acquired may 

 prove useful. 



One afternoon in the Annamullays, I got a bull bison 

 by the exercise of woodcraft of this nature. The herd 

 was feeding in a valley, down which there was an almost 

 imperceptible drift of wind, as is often the case in such 

 situations, we estimated it to be moving at the rate of 

 about fifty yards per minute ; the bison were in an open 

 space devoid of covert, but on the windward side a 

 narrow belt of bamboos, about fifty yards long, ran out 

 from the surrounding forest to within easy distance of 

 the bull. To reach that point, however, it was 

 necessary to pass to windward, and within forty yards 

 of, three cows, on the hither side of this promontory, 

 therefore, nearly a minute was available to stalk and fire 

 at the bull after passing them. The calculation was 

 correct, but it was touch and go, for, just before pressing 

 the trigger, the nearest cow got the wind from the spot 

 I had passed a minute before, too late, however, to save 

 the life of her lord and master. 



Elephants and bison are often found in the same 

 tracts of jungle, the natural food of both being the 

 bamboo ; but the former animal is more nomadic in 

 his tendencies, and does not adhere to a particular locality 

 for any length of time, as is customary with the latter. 

 One reason for this is, that a herd of elephants will exhaust 

 and destroy the forage in a given district more quickly 

 than ten times as many bison. The elephant also differs 

 from the bison in his predilection for raiding grain crops 

 in cultivated land, which the latter animal never ventures 



