216 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



been in past years considerable loss from the depredations 

 of elephant stealers. Of course the way in which the thief 

 could profit by his theft was to smuggle the elephant over 

 the frontier to some neighbouring country, and sell it there. 

 For a time the Siamese Government found it exceedingly 

 difficult to remedy the trouble, few of the stolen ele- 

 phants being ever recovered. Recently, however, through 

 a more energetic administration of the law by His Excel- 

 lency, Chao Phya Surasih, efficiently aided by the provin- 

 cial gendarmerie, the practice has been checked, only 

 eleven elephants having been stolen in 1913-1914 in Sia- 

 mese territory, nine of these being subsequently recovered.* 



Both favourable and unfavourable results are reported 

 as produced by the stringent governmental protection of 

 wild elephants in Siam. While their immunity from attack 

 has operated in the direction of a slow but progressive in- 

 crease in their numbers, the cultivators of the soil find con- 

 siderable difficulty in shielding their crops from the inroads 

 of the elephants; during the rice harvest men must be set 

 on watch in the fields and have to keep firing off their guns 

 constantly to scare away the predatory animals. Many 

 trained elephants are owned by the Government and by a 

 few wealthy noblemen, as well as by the great companies 

 dealing in teak, such as the Bombay, Burma, East Asiatic, 

 and Borneo Company, and the price of these trained ele- 

 phants is constantly advancing. The increased railroad 

 facilities in certain districts of Siam operate to render the 

 use of elephants less needed for transportation purposes, 

 but in the hinterland they are still absolutely necessary, f 



An amusing adventure with a rogue elephant formed one 

 of the incidents of an arduous Christmas journey under- 

 taken by two Englishmen who were camping in an out-of- 



*The Bangkok Times, June 3, 1914. 

 ^Communicated by Dr. Charles S. Braddock, Jr. 



