ELEPHANT TUSKS 417 



1899-1900 and 1902-1903, Mr. William Fitz Hugh White- 

 house killed twelve elephants. For part of the time Mr. 

 Whitehouse was elephant hunting for the Emperor Mene- 

 lik of Abyssinia; he only kept a single pair of tusks for 

 himself, and states that the largest tusk in any of the bull- 

 elephants he killed weighed 98 lbs.; the heaviest one of a 

 female elephant had a weight of but 45 lbs. Mr. White- 

 house calls attention to the fact that there is considerable 

 loss of weight through drying out, and as his heaviest tusk 

 was only weighed a year after the elephant was killed, its 

 original weight may have been at least 100 lbs. 



In the National Collection of Heads and Horns shown at 

 the New York Zoological Park is a monster elephant head 

 complete with trunk and tusks. This was one of the tro- 

 phies brought back by Mr. Richard Tjader from a hunting 

 trip to equatorial Africa in 1906, the elephant having been 

 brought down near the Gojito Mountains, British East 

 Africa, by a single front head shot to the brain. Accurate 

 measurements were made, and these showed a height of 

 11 ft. 4 in. The tusks were 7 ft. 2 in. long and weighed 

 together 168 lbs. The weight of the mounted head is 1,750 

 lbs. and the spread from tip to tip of the enormous ears is 

 more than 10 ft.; the trunk is 8 ft. 6 in. long. As to the 

 ability of some of the large African elephants to break down 

 good-sized trees, Mr. Tjader relates that he once came across 

 a perfectly sound tree, measuring 33| in. in circumference, 

 that had been broken off by an elephant about 7 ft. from the 

 base. Another somewhat interesting circumstance is the 

 confirmation by a European of the story told by native 

 hunters that the elephants of a certain district in German 

 East Africa are exceedingly fond of a species of root which 

 acts upon them as a powerful intoxicant, sometimes over- 

 coming them so thoroughly that they will lie down, an 

 unusual thing for an elephant, and fall into such a sound 



