128 A South African Elephant. 
Livingstone of the ear of a female standing 8 feet 8 inches, which are 
4 feet 5 inches in vertical depth and 4 feet in horizontal depth, and 
says that ‘“ while indicating the large size of the ears characteristic of 
South African elephants generally, these dimenstions are suggestive of 
the Addo Bush type. 
The Durban Museum specimen although an immature male is said 
by Mr. F. W. FitzSimons, the Director of the Port Elizabeth Museum, 
to have been the leader of a herd, and to be the finest elephant obtain- 
able there. 
The exposed portions of the tusks measure 3 feet 2 inches in length, 
and the greatest circumference is 11} inches. The measurements 
taken immediately after death are as follows: height at shoulders 9 
feet 9 inches, girth 14 feet, length from between the eyes to root of 
tail 9 feet 5 inches, girth of hind-leg at thinnest part 34 inches, girth 
of fore-leg at thinnest part 40 inches. 
As will be seen from the photographs on plates xxi and xxii, the ear 
is by no means square. It measures 3 feet 10 inches in depth as 
mounted, but there is a flap at the top of 7 inches, hanging down 
behind, making it 4 feet 5 inches in total vertical depth: the width is 
2 feet 7 inches. It will be noted that although the vertical depth 
agrees exactly with Livingstone’s measurement, the width, or horizontal 
depth as he calls it, is considerably less. 
The ventral line of the body is very far from horizontal. The whole 
skin is scantily covered with short hair, which is thicker under the 
chin and around the entrance to the ear, where it is also longer. 
One cannot resist being forced to the conclusion that this splitting 
of the African elephant into so many local races has been done upon 
insufficient material. Not only so, but the character chiefly used is to 
a great extent unreliable in stuffed specimens, for anyone 
intimately acquainted with the art of taxidermy will understand that, 
when properly relaxed and thinned down, the skin of a large animal, 
in the hands of a taxidermist is like clay in the hands of a potter. And 
the ears of a elephant can be stretched enormously or, on the other 
hand, allowed to shrink to very much less than their original size, 
while their ultimate form is not necessarily the natural shape, but 
what the taxidermist conceives it to be. 
JOHN SINGLETON & SONS, PRINTERS, DURBAN. 
