180 ELEPHANTS. 



a head shot, it is difficult to say ; perhaps an artery may 

 have been cut, the haemorrhage from which might not prove 

 immediately fatal in the case of so huge an animal. Some 

 years ago an account of an elephant's death from the hite 

 of a cobra appeared in an Indian newspaper, and, to the 

 best of my recollection, nearly twenty-four hours elapsed 

 before the animal died ; whereas, in the case of a human 

 being, death supervenes in about the same number of 

 minutes. Atlay, the Carder shikari, informed me that in the 

 year 1867, in the Annamullays, when great numbers of bison 

 died from murrain, many elephants also suffered from the 

 same disease, and that he got three hundred rupees for a 

 pair of tusks he then took from a dead bull elephant. In 

 those days they were in the habit of catching elephants in 

 pitfalls, the remains of which still existed in many parts of 

 these forests, as well as in the Tippicado district of the 

 Wynaad. 



The Kheddah operations by Sanderson supplied great 

 numbers of elephants to the Government, and put a stop 

 to the system of pitfalls ; but when in Bangalore in 1881, 

 I was informed that the last animal of his first catch 

 of elephants (numbering over fifty), had died that year;, 

 and, as they had not survived ten years' captivity, 

 there would appear to be something wrong in this 

 method of capture. I am unable to vouch personally 

 for these facts, but statements to this effect were 

 made to me by more than one person who ought to 

 have known the truth of the case, and whose veracity 

 was above suspicion. When in pursuit of elephants or 

 bison, very dark shikar clothes should be worn, the 

 ordinary khaki colour being much too light for the jungles 

 frequented by them. A friend of mine, who was wearing a 

 light -coloured coat, once had a very narrow escape from a 



