416 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



and 1913, in British East India, Uganda, the Congo, and 

 the Sudan. The heaviest pair of tusks he obtained weighed, 

 respectively, 88 lbs. and 103 lbs. 



In Africa the deposits of buried elephant tusks are often 

 discovered by the merest chance. For example, elephant 

 hunters while travelling through a swamp will sometimes 

 feel beneath their feet what they think to be roots in the 

 swampland, but upon investigation these may prove to be 

 not roots but elephant bones, the swamp being filled with 

 skeletons of these animals. From such masses of bones 

 many valuable tusks have been obtained and have ulti- 

 mately found their way to the ivory workers. This and 

 similar experiences serve to explain the occurrence of mas- 

 todon and mammoth remains in such quantities in various 

 parts of the world. Evidently the elephant, when ill or 

 injured, will do what the horse does under similar circum- 

 stances, namely, select a damp or cool place to bathe in; 

 and perhaps to obtain more succulent food may be attracted 

 to a piece of swampland, and being so heavy the animal 

 will naturally sink into the soft bottom. Then again, if 

 driven or hunted by man or lion, in attempting to make its 

 escape through a swamp, such as those so often to be found 

 in the Congo district, the elephant may sink down into the 

 wet earth until it becomes completely buried. 



Of the elephant burying grounds described by Paul 

 Carpentier and others, there exists among the African 

 natives a belief that when an old bull is decrepit or extremely 

 ill he will travel to the northward and in thus instinctively 

 following a straight line in his course, he may run into a 

 swamp and become buried there, although under normal 

 conditions he might have been inclined to turn aside and 

 avoid it; or else, being very ill, he may die in the place w^here 

 he sought relief. 



During two hunting expeditions to equatorial Africa, in 



