38 THE ELEPHANT 



that within the human period elephants closely 

 similar to those of our own time, far more 

 numerous and widely distributed than they are at 

 present, and occurring all over the earth's tem- 

 perate zone, belonged to a type midway between 

 the great beast with which we are all familiar and 

 his remote ancestor. It is stated to have been 

 a comparatively small creature about the size of a 

 donkey, and not only without the prolonged upper 

 lip or trunk of the modern elephant, but wholly 

 destitute of the latter's often enormous tusks. 



This scientific disclosure, when I read it, 

 ruthlessly swept away one of my most cherished 

 illusions. I had always regarded our elephants, 

 both of the African and Indian varieties, as the 

 descendants of either the mammoths or mastodons. 

 I was never sure which, but I felt it must be the 

 larger of the two, whichever that might be. I 

 pictured to myself a mountainous prodigy about 

 30 feet high, covered with a matted coat of 

 coarse, brownish hair, and possessed of huge, bow- 

 like, outward-curving tusks, whose points finally 

 turned inward. When at length I learned the 

 whole truth of the modern elephant's ancestry, 

 therefore, I realised the true inwardness of my 

 years of melancholy self-deception. 



Turning, however, from the elephant of pre- 

 historic times to the splendid animal of the same 

 race which still roams the forests of South Central 

 Africa in considerable numbers, it is satisfactory 

 to be able to say that he stands in no immediate 

 danger of extinction. If you were to draw a 

 circle with a centre fixed slightly to the westward 



