ELEPHANT HUNTING 
241 
numbers at certain places, where only a few bulls are ever 
found. Where undisturbed elephant rest, and wander 
about at all times of the day and night, and feed without 
much regard to fixed hours. Morning or evening, noon or 
midnight, the herd may be on the move, or its members 
may be resting; yet, during the hottest hours of noon they 
seldom feed, and ordinarily stand almost still, resting—for 
elephant very rarely lie down unless sick. Where they are 
afraid of man, their only enemy, they come out to feed in 
thinly forested plains, or cultivated fields, when they do so 
at all, only at night, and before daybreak move back into 
the forest to rest. Elsewhere they sometimes spend the day 
in the open, in grass or low bush. Where we were, at this 
time, on Kenia, the elephants sometimes moved down at 
night to feed in the shambas, at the expense of the crops 
of the natives, and sometimes stayed in the forest, feeding 
by day or night on the branches they tore off the trees, or, 
occasionally, on the roots they grubbed up with their tusks. 
They work vast havoc among the young or small growth of 
a forest, and the readiness with which they uproot, overturn, 
or break off medium sized trees conveys a striking impres¬ 
sion of their enormous strength. I have seen a tree a foot 
in diameter thus uprooted and overturned. 
The African elephant has never, like his Indian kins¬ 
man, been trained to man’s use. There is still hope that 
the feat may be performed; but hitherto its probable eco¬ 
nomic usefulness has for various reasons seemed so ques¬ 
tionable that there has been scant encouragement to un¬ 
dergo the necessary expense and labor. Up to the present 
time the African elephant has yielded only his ivory as an 
asset of value. This, however, has been of such great value 
