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CHAPTER XVI. 



THE ELEPHANTS {ELEPHANTID^. 



We now come to the contemplation of the animals that are, 

 to many people, the most interesting of ail living mammals. 

 Elephants belong in natural history to the pachydermatous, or 

 thick-skinned order, and to the section proboscidea. They are the 

 only representatives of a family that were once more numerous, the 

 other members being now extinct ; their fossils or skeleton remains, 

 Avhich are occasionally found, being all that are left of a mighty 

 race of giant animals, ancestors or near relations of the existing 

 elephants, which roamed about on the face of the globe in a bygone 

 age, had their day and disappeared, leaving but a few bones • as 

 memorials of their temporary existence for scientists to speculate 

 about and ponder over. 



And in these days of mighty hunters, armed with most deadly 

 weapons, and of enterprising merchants ransacking all creation for 

 supplies to meet the demand of their teeming markets, the one 

 slaughtering ruthlessly for the mere sake of killing, and the other 

 for the sake of skins or hides, or for horns and ivory — the elephants, 

 among other animals, the descendants of a race older than the hills 

 or the forests through which they roam, were becoming scarce 

 and seemed doomed. In India, where their massacre was wanton, 

 owing to the existence of a class of young sportsmen who killed 

 for killing's sake, shooting females ruthlessly and not for ivory 

 or food, the Government had at last to interfere and prevent the 

 annihilation of their native elephants, being urged so to do 

 by Lord Napier, the Governor, who pleaded most fervently in a 

 minute on the subject for the noble animals' protection against 

 the wholesale butchery. He pointed out the absolute necessity of 



