The Elephant p 



weight into the push they give at the end of the swing. During the dry 

 season trees over a foot in diameter— usually fruit-bearing trees— are often 

 broken clean off at a height of 2 or 3 feet from the ground. But in the rainy 

 season, when the soil is soaked and the roots of some species of trees have 

 but little hold in the ground, elephants will push over trees of such a size 

 that one would not believe that the strength of any living animal could 

 affect them. I once saw a young bull elephant push over an Umglosi 

 tree, a species which bears a sweet-tasted fruit ; and immediately it fell, all 

 the young elephants of the herd rushed up and commenced to pick off the 

 fruit with the finger and thumb-like extremity of their trunks and convey 

 them to their mouths one by one as quickly as possible. 



African elephants are highly gregarious and are, or were, often met with 

 in immense herds of from one to four hundred individuals. These large 

 herds were often composed almost exclusively of cows and calves with a 

 certain number of young bulls amongst them, the old bulls seldom being 

 met with herding among the cows. I have, however, met with bulls 

 apparently full grown amongst a herd of cows, and I once followed on the 

 tracks of eight or ten old bulls and came up with them standing in close 

 proximity to an immense troop of cows and calves. As a rule, old bulls 

 keep to themselves and are met with either singly or two or three up to a 

 dozen together. Solitary bulls in Africa are not more vicious than others, 

 and really big old bulls are usually less savage than cows and young bulls. 

 African elephants seem fond of climbing to the top of hills often over 

 very broken, rocky ground. They, however, do most of their climbing 

 at night. They can only go uphill at a slow pace, but come down 

 like an avalanche, when frightened or angry, and will negotiate very steep 

 places by sitting down and sliding on their haunches. They are good 

 swimmers, and five-and-twenty years ago it was a common thing for 

 elephants to cross the Zambesi during the night between the Victoria 

 Falls and the mouth of the Chobi. The natives have told me that they 



