2 Great and Small Game of Africa 



course, many other striking peculiarities in the structure of elephants, but 

 the above are sufficient to distinguish them from all other animals. 



Externally the African species is characterised by its enormous ears, 

 convex forehead, concave back (of which the shoulder forms the highest 

 point), the presence of tusks in both sexes, the reduction of the nails on the 

 hind-foot to three, and the existence of a finger-like process on both the 

 front and hind margins of the tip of the trunk. More important than all, 

 is the comparatively small number of plates entering into the composition 

 of each grinding-tooth ; the worn surface of each of these plates showing a 

 lozenge-shaped ellipse of ivory surrounded by a band of the harder enamel. 



In Southern Africa 



Oliphant of Cape Dutch ; Indhlovu of Zulus ; Incubu of Matabele ; 

 Thloo of Bechuanas 



The steady advance of civilisation northwards from the Cape Colony 

 during the last fifty years has banished the elephant from vast areas of 

 country, where it was once very abundant, and with the exception of a 

 limited number which are carefully preserved in the Zitzikama forests near 

 Mossel Bay and in the Addo bush near Port Elizabeth, there are, I believe, 

 no elephants existing to-day anywhere south of the Limpopo, except a 

 couple of small herds which wander over the country in the neighbourhood 

 of the Maputa River to the south of Delagoa Bay. In the whole of Khama's 

 country there is now, to the best of my belief, only one resident herd of 

 elephants, though during the rainy season a few herds wandering south- 

 wards from the country between the Upper Chobi and Okavango rivers 

 may occasionally come within the borders of his northern hunting grounds 

 in the Mababi district. The resident herd I have spoken of above inhabits 

 the dense thorn jungles between Sode Gara and the chain of permanent 



