564 WILD ANIMALS SMALLER Chap. XXVIII. 



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, &c. One of the coins is of Faustina senior, the other 

 of Septimius Severus, and struck a.d. 197. These elephants 

 were brought from Africa to Kome. 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 upwards 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. Unfortu- 

 nately, 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- 



