28 Great and Small Game of Africa 



elephants that die from "natural causes." I do not think this is so — in 

 Africa at all events — any more in regard to these than any other wild 

 animals. In the first place, when you come upon the remains of an 

 elephant — as I have done frequently in all stages, from the carcase only 

 dead a couple of days to old bones — how are you to tell what caused its 

 death or distinguish between natural and unnatural causes ? But, on the 

 other hand, if you argue that elephants do not die of old age because they 

 are not found languishing in the last stage of decrepitude, I would ask, does 

 not that apply equally to all ferce naturtz ? Do we find other animals at 

 the last gasp, worn out by sheer weight of years ? Or do we find their 

 carcases or bones with any distinguishing mark to prove that such has been 

 their end ? In the vastness of the forests a sick animal hiding itself away 

 is like a needle in a haystack, and the chances against such a one being 

 run against by the few human beings who penetrate such solitudes are 

 infinite. A. H. Neumann. 



In Somaliland 

 Somali Name, Marodi 



No Somali game has changed its range so remarkably in recent years as 

 the elephant ; and this is due to these animals having been driven away 

 from their old haunts by the attacks of European sportsmen. They had, 

 of course, always been hunted from time immemorial by the native Somali 

 sword-hunters ; but that calling entails so much hardship, and is one of 

 such superlative danger, that it is followed by few ; and these attacks 

 appear never to have affected permanently the range and habitat of the 

 game. Now that the Abyssinians on the frontier, armed with elephant 

 rifles, are beginning to harry these animals, the case will be different. 



When Europeans first thoroughly explored the Somali shooting- 

 grounds in 1884, there were elephants to be found in the interior plains 



