OF WILD ANIMALS 283 



butting their heads, pushing and straining until the weaker 

 turned and ran, nothing came of it all. I have yet to find a 

 man who ever saw a wild buffalo that had been wounded to 

 the shedding of blood by another wild buffalo. It is probable 

 that no other species ever fought so fiercely and did so little 

 damage as the American bison. 



Elephants, Wolves, and Others. In ordinary life the 

 Indian elephant is one of the most even-tempered of aU animals. 

 I have spent hours in watching wild herds in southern India, 

 sometimes finding the huge beasts all around me, and in 

 dangerously close proximity. Several times I could have 

 touched a wild elephant with a carriage whip, had I possessed 

 one. So far from fighting, I never saw an elephant threaten 

 or even annoy another. 



Elephants, being the most intelligent of all animals in the 

 matter of training, have been educated to fight in the arena, 

 usually by pushing each other head to head. A fighting tusker 

 can lord it over almost any number of tuskless elephants, 

 because he can pierce their vitals, and they cannot pierce his. 

 A female fights by hitting with her head, striking her antagonist 

 amidships, if possible. Once when the late G. P. Sanderson 

 was in a keddah, noosing wild elephants, and was assulted by 

 a vicious tusker, his life was saved by a tame female elephant, 

 whose boy driver caused her to attack the tusker with her 

 head, and nearly bowl him over by the force of her blows 

 upon his ribs. 



In captivity, wolves are the meanest brutes on earth, and 

 in a wild state they are no better. As a rule, the stronger 

 ones are ever ready to kill the weaker ones, and eat them, too. 

 One night, our male Russian wolf killed his mate, and ate 

 nearly half of her before morning. A fox or a wolf cub which 

 thrusts one of its legs between the partition bars and into 

 a wolf's den almost invariably gets it bitten off as close to the 

 body as the biter can go. In the arctic regions, north of the 

 Great Slave Lake, "Buffalo" Jones and George Rea ^fought 



