XIII.—A South African Elephant from the Addo Bush, 
by 
E. C. Chubb, Curator, Durban Museum. 
Wirn Puates XXII and XXII. 
i 1917, the Durban Museum received by exchange with the Port 
Elizabeth Museum the skin of a male elephant which had been 
killed a short time previously at the Addo Bush. The mounting of it 
was completed a few months ago, and it is now on exhibition in the 
Mammal Room. 
Elephants have been preserved for some years past at Knysna and 
Addo Bush in Cape Colony, while South of the Zambesi River they 
still exist in a wild state in parts of Southern Rhodesia aud Portuguese 
East Africa, and possibly also in Ovamboland, South West Africa. 
A solitary male existed in Zululand until February, 1916, when it was 
shot by a Native. Its skeleton is now to be seen in the Museum at 
Pietermaritzburg. 
Considerable interest has been aroused of late in the elephants 
at the Addo Bush on account of their threatened destruction. 
Through scarcity of water in the Reserve, the elephants are prone to 
break out and make their way to the dams on farms in the vicinity, 
causing damage to property and danger to life. The farmers 
consequently petitioned the Cape Provincial Council for their 
extermination, or alternatively, to devise some means of rendering 
them harmless. A select committee was accordingly appointed, 
which in due course presented its report to the Provincial Council. 
It is satisfactory to note that Government is fully alive to the fact 
that the extermination of these elephants, which constitute but a small 
survival of the great numbers which less than a century ago roamed 
over a large part of South Africa, would be viewed as nothing short of 
a great calamity by zoologists throughout the world. Paragraph 5 of 
the report reads as follows :—‘*‘ Your Committee is extremely averse 
to recommending extermination. The South African elephant now 
apparently restricted to a small remnant in the Knysna forests, and to 
those in the Addo Bush, while not specifically distinct from the Central 
Africa elephant, does constitute a distinct variety, the extinction of 
which would be a loss to the world. The deliberate extermination of 
these elephants would upon grounds of deeply felt general sentiment, 
(126) 
