6 Great and Small Game of Africa 



elephant ever actually shot by a European in South Africa is, I 

 believe, the one killed on the Zouga River in 1849 by the late 

 Mr. Oswell, who records the aggregate weight of the tusks as being 

 between 230 lbs. and 240 lbs., and their length rather less than 

 8 feet. The bull that carried this very heavy pair of tusks was, Mr. 

 Oswell tells us, the smallest of all the old male elephants which he shot. 

 In Equatorial Africa the average weight of elephant tusks is certainly 

 considerably greater than it ever was in South Africa, and tusks weighing 

 upwards of 1 00 lbs. each do not seem to be uncommon. 



Whilst hunting in the neighbourhood of Lake Rudolph in 1894, Mr. 

 Arthur H. Neumann shot several elephants with tusks weighing about a 

 hundredweight apiece, the largest, when thoroughly dried out, scaling 

 116 lbs. As regards shooting elephants with tusks weighing upwards of 

 100 lbs., no white hunter in South Africa, either Boer or Englishman, has 

 ever approached Mr. Neumann's record. Up to a few months ago, the 

 largest tusk known was the one in the possession of Sir Edmund Loder, 

 which weighs 184 lbs. and measures 9 feet 5 inches in length, with a 

 circumference of 22^ inches, but quite recently a tusk has been brought 

 to Zanzibar which weighs 225 lbs. Both these tusks probably came 

 from some part of Equatorial East Africa. Cow elephants in South 

 Africa carry tusks, when full grown, weighing on the average from 10 lbs. 

 to 14 lbs. They sometimes grow much larger, but cow-tusks of 20 lbs. 

 weight were always exceptional, though I once saw one which weighed 

 39 lbs., its fellow being nearly as heavy. As a rule all African elephants 

 carry tusks, but in every herd there used to be one or two tuskless cows, 

 sometimes more. In all my experience, however, I have only seen one 

 tuskless bull. Both cows and bulls occasionally have only one tusk, and 

 when that is the case there is no rudimentary tusk on the other side, the 

 bone being quite solid. I have more than once noticed the calf of a 

 tuskless cow with tusks. I have never noticed in South Africa that the 



