Review oj lirviews, 1/10/13. 



LEADING ARTICLES. 



793 



ahle. Fast traffic is delayed by slow-going 

 lorries in front; the inexorable policeman 

 keeps one bunch of traffic waiting while a 

 luckier mass is permitted to pass in another 

 direction. 



The illustration, reproduced by cour- 

 tesy of the Royal, is in. its way a good 

 object-lesson for the Melbourne police- 

 man, at any rate. The London 

 " bobby " indulges in no wild waving 

 of arms and beckoning hither and 

 thither. He has absolute control of 

 traffic, beside which that of Melbourne 

 is child's play, and woe betide the driver 

 who does not obey his slightest gesture 

 on the instant. 



Time spent for the sake of a good 

 seat in a theatre can hardly, perhaps, be 

 termed criminal waste, since it is sacri- 

 ficed intentionally. That, too, how- 

 ever, might be saved for useful work or 

 recreation if universal booking were 

 generally favoured. 



Considering only thirty theatres and 

 twelve music-halls in the West End, 

 and estimating that, at each of three 

 hundred and fifty yearly performances, 

 fifty persons wait for an hour outside 

 each theatre, one finds that the total 

 time wasted is one hundred and seventy 

 years of individual life! 



THE WAYS OF ELEPHANTS. 



Mr. Loring tells in Outing of the 

 ways of the huge pachyderm in its 

 native haunts. The writer was a mem- 

 ber of the expedition led by ex-Presi- 

 dent Roosevelt through Uganda for the 

 purpose of securing specimens foi mu- 

 seums in America. The trip, by the 

 way, was financed largely by Mr. An- 

 drew Carnegie. Mr. Loring does not 

 consider that elephants are being exter- 

 minated. The large bulls, carrying 

 tusks of not less than sixty pounds the 

 pair — the minimum weight for their law- 

 ful killing — are being killed out. 

 Young bulls, cows and calves are still 

 plentiful, and always will be, for they 

 have no commercial value, and are sel- 

 dom molested by the natives. 



During my eleven months in Africa, I 

 must have seen about two hundred ele- 

 phants; not many, that is true, when one 

 realises that the professional elephant hunter 

 who knows the best elephant country finds 

 them in herds numbering into the thou- 

 sands. 



In regions where elephants are common 

 they cause considerable damage to the 

 natives by raiding the plantations — usually 

 at night— and feeding on sugar-cane, corn 

 and vegetables. We passed through one sec- 

 tion of country where the people had con- 

 structed grass watch houses in the tops of 

 trees, in which guards were stationed to 

 look for elephants. As soon as a herd was 

 sighted, an alarm was sounded, and the 

 people gathered with drums, horns, and 

 other racket-making devices, and frightened 

 the elephants away. 



Elephants become so bold that they tear 

 down huts, and even kill the people. Within 

 two days' march of Lake Albert, we came 

 to a village near which lived a "rogue" 

 elephant that had terrorised the people for 



weeks. He visited the gardens nearly every 

 night, wrecked huts, destroyed crops, and 

 had killed one man. 



Colonel Roosevelt shot the animal at 

 the urgent request of the natives. 



HOW THE BEASTS TRAVEL. 



In the thickly-wooded countries the ele- 

 phants had travelled single file and stepped 

 in each others' footprints. Sometimes deep 

 holes had been worn in the earth, and there 

 were stretches where these holes were full 

 of water, so, in following them, we had to 

 step over the puddles from ridge to ridge 

 As the stride of an elephant is much longer 

 than that of a man, we found travelling at 

 times leg-stretching work. 



While the trails themselves were wide and 

 well worn, strange to say the great brutes 

 has simply forced their way through the 

 tangle, which closed in behind them, so we 

 were kept busy ducking under limbs, push- 

 ing brush away from our faces, and climbing 

 over logs. In passing along the elephants 

 had chosen the best course, but whenever a 

 tree of not too great size obstructed the 

 way, they had put their heads against it 

 and pushed it over, tearing up the roots 

 on all sides. 



In one place where a large herd of ele- 

 phants had passed through an acacia grove 

 to water at the Nile, the uprooted and torn 

 down trees appeared as though a cyclone 

 had swept over them. The acacia tree is 

 a species of thorn tree, with spines three 

 and four inches long. The thorns produce 

 a poisonous effect on the flesh, which lasts 

 for several days, yet the elephants fed ex- 

 tensively on them, thorns and all. 



All through the jungle at the foot of 

 big trees were beds where elephants had 

 kicked up the dirt as they stood sleeping 

 and swinging their great feet, for an ele- 

 phant sleeps while standing, and rarely lies 

 down to rest, 



A NEAR THING. 



Mr. Loring describes some rather nar- 

 row escapes. Often, though, after 



