12 
HAMLYVS MENAGERIE MAGAZINE. 
Pies, Jays, and Joy-thrushes, three kinds of Birds 
of Paradise, greater, lesser and red, and the first 
Trogon that I know to have been kept in captivity. 
We had to buy a couple of dozen Green- 
winged Doves to get hold of this; it was fed mostly 
on grasshoppers and cockroaches, the Asiatic 
Trogons being insectivorous, while the American 
kinds, like the Cuban Trogon, the only species 
which has been brought to Europe, are chiefly 
fruit-eaters. 
The birds excited particular interest among 
the native public, who, indeed, call the Zoo the 
"Bird Place" (Chiriya khana); and the way in 
which they would go round with keen interest in 
animals of all classes was rather a contrast to our 
people's more limited craving for lions, elephants, 
monkeys, and snakes; though of late years I have 
Certainly noticed a widening of interest in the case 
of visitors to our Zoo, who take much more notice 
of birds and other small things than they did once. 
The usual food the native visitors gave the various 
creatures was pop-corn, and the most unlikely- 
looking animals acquired a taste for this, as they 
do for monkey-nuts here. 
The native has a painful interest in some ex- 
hibits, for Lower Bengal is well within the haunts 
of the largest and most terrible of living reptiles, 
the Estuarine Crocodile (Crocodibus porosus), and 
one big crocodile we had, which soon died, as the 
big ones always did, threw up before his death a 
human leg and some bones, a grim reminder of 
what his past had been. As to cobras, one was 
actually caught wild in the Zoo grounds, though 
I never saw one there myself, or anywhere else in 
India, during all my residence there. 
THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ADDO 
BUSH. 
(Special to the "African World.") 
By Sir Harry H. Johnston, G.C.M.G. 
Readers of that excellent and informative 
periodical, " Hamlyn's Menagerie Magazine," will 
have realised — with dismay if they are interested 
in natural history — that the local authorities and 
residents at Uitenhage purpose destroying com- 
pletely the herd of wild elephants in the Addo 
Bush, a forest district of fifteen square miles (?) 
on the flanks of the Zuurberg Mountains, behind 
Port Elizabeth, in South-eastern Cape Province. 
This herd, with the exception of another small 
one which may still linger in the Knysna Forest, 
also in Cape Province, is the last that remains of 
the wild elephant in southernmost Africa, and, 
furthermore, is a distinct sub-species, and to zoo- 
logists of very great interest. According to the 
information quoted by Mr. Hamlyn, the Addo 
Bush herd, numbers now as many as 150 individ- 
uals, so that it has obviously increased of late. 
The area on which it lives is too small to feed 
it, perhaps, but in any case, as the Addo Bush is 
quite unenclosed, the elephants leave the forest 
and do great damage to adjoining plantations and 
crops, and are even sometimes dangerous to human 
beings. For the proper maintenance of such a 
magnificent legacy of the past, an area of greater 
size is necessary, but most of all, whatever area 
was chosen, it would have to be surrounded with 
some fence or dyke which the elephants could not 
cross. A comparatively small space of parkland 
would suffice if it could be strictly enclosed so that 
the elephants could not escape, because then, 
when the herd grew larger than the natural sup- 
ply of vegetation sufficed to feed, they could be 
kept down to a certain number by judicious killing, 
and the expense of keeping up such a national 
park might be partly met by highly priced licences 
to kill, by the sale of ivory and other trophies. 
THE CAPE'S BEAUTIFUL FLORA. 
But to think for a moment that the nation of 
Cape Province is heedlessly going to destroy what 
any American State would regard as a national 
asset, brings home to one, alas ! once again the 
want of imagination, the want, if I may say so, 
of education which characterises so much of South 
Africa. One has noticed it in times past in the 
reckless destruction of the unique flora of Table 
Mountain and other elevated mountains with a 
sufficient rain supply in southernmost Africa. It 
has been with the greatest difficulty that any 
(generally foreign born) Government botanist has 
secured some degree of protection for the Cape 
flora, perhaps one of the most singular and one of 
the most beautiful in the world. Vast herds of 
big game were, of course, in the past quite incom- 
patible with turning the lands of South Africa to 
good account for the white or black settler, but 
even more care might have been taken to preserve 
examples of the Cape fauna. 
DOMESTICATION OF THE SPRINGBOK. 
The same mazagine from which I am quoting 
about the Addo Bush draws our attention to a 
more encouraging outlook : the domestication of 
that beautiful antelope known as the springbok. 
The springbok is quite good to eat; it is one of 
the most beautiful of the antelopes; it is easily 
tamed, and its pelt is in great demand for the for- 
mation of rugs and karosses. 
THE ELAND, ZEBRA AND OSTRICH. 
In the Orange River State and the Transvaal 
a greater interest has been shown in the saving 
and the domestication of remarkable wild animals 
