WILD ANIMALS SMALLEST WHERE FOOD ABOUNDS. 605 



large brass Medals," the size of the ears will be at once noted as 

 those of the true African elephant. They were even more docile 

 than the Asiatic, and were taught various feats,* as walking on 

 ropes, dancing, etc. One of the coins is of Faustina senior, the 

 other of Severus the Seventh, and struck A.D. 197. These ele- 

 phants were brought from Africa to Rome. The attempt to tame 

 this most useful animal has never been made at the Cape, nor has 

 one ever been exhibited in England. There is only one very 

 young calf of the species in the British Museum. 



The abundance of food in this country, as compared with the 

 south, would lead one to suppose that animals here must attain a 

 much greater size ; but actual measurement now confirms the 

 impression made on my mind by the mere sight of the animals, 

 that those in the districts north of 20° were smaller than the 

 same races existing southward of that latitude. The first time 

 that Mr. Oswell and myself saw full-grown male elephants on 

 the River Zouga, they seemed no larger than the females (which 

 are always smaller than males) we had met on the Limpopo. 

 There they attain a height of upward of 12 feet. At the Zouga 

 the height of one I measured was 11 feet 4 inches, and in this 

 district 9 feet 10 inches. There is, however, an increase in the 

 size of the tusks as we approach the equator. Unfortunately, I 

 never made measurements of other animals in the south ; but 

 the appearance of the animals themselves in the north at once 

 produced the impression on my mind referred to as to their 

 decrease in size. When we first saw koodoos, they were so much 

 smaller than those we had been accustomed to in the south that 

 we doubted whether they were not a new kind of antelope ; and 

 the leche, seen nowhere south of 20°, is succeeded by the poku as 

 we go north. This is, in fact, only a smaller species of that ante- 



