OEDEE OP PACHYDEEMATA. 12g 



less numerous. They are sometimes found alone : the Dutch call 

 these rddcurs, rovers or prowlers. They were formerly much 

 more common in the environs of the Cape of Good Hope than they 

 are at present. Thunberg relates that a hunter told him that he 

 had killed, in these regions, four or five a day, and that regularly. 

 He added that the number of his victims had many a time 

 amounted to twelve or thirteen, and even to twenty-two in one 

 day. This may perhaps have been but a braggart's idle boast. 

 Still they abound in the vast interior of Africa. 



The African differs much from the Asiatic Elephant in that 

 which concerns its relations to Man. He does not require of the 

 former what he obtains from the latter. The African Elephant 

 has, in modern times, been rarely hunted but for the food which its 

 flesh supplies, or more possibly for the sake of its tusks. 



In shooting the African Elephant guns and poisoned arrows are 

 made use of Formerly it was customary to entice it and make 

 it fall into pits, at the bottom of which it impaled itself on sharp- 

 pointed stakes. Levaillant has given some very interesting details 

 on this sort of sport, but want of space forbids us from here 

 repeating them. 



Delegorgue, a French traveller, has published, more recently, 

 some curious accounts of the habits of African Elephants. Among 

 these animals, gathered together in troops, there prevails a spirit 

 of imitation which sometimes makes them all do exactly what the 

 first has done. Delegorgue relates on this subject th«vJ'ollowing 

 episode of one of his hunting excursions. A band of Elephants 

 was coming towards him and his two hunting companions. He 

 shot at the first of the troop ; the ElejDhant fell, sinking on its 

 knees. A second Elephant was then killed, and fell on its knees 

 over the first. Another of the sportsmen then shot in his turn, and 

 the Elephant aimed at fell in the same manner over the two others. 

 All the Elephants fell thus on their knees even to the very last of 

 them (eleven in all !) under the fire of the sportsmen.* 



The African Elephant has not always been a useless being, fit 

 only to be a target for adventurous sportsmen. In ancient days, 

 when the empire of Carthage was flourishing, this immense living 

 machine was turned into a powerful auxiliary. The Carthaginians 



* This does not accord with the experience of our numerous British spoilsmen 

 who have shot so many African Elephants ! — En. 



K 



