564 
WILD ANIMALS SMALLER 
Chap. XXVIIL 
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 tins country, as compared with the 
south, would lead one to suppose that animals here must attain a 
much greater size; but actual measurement now confnms 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. Wheu 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- 
