732 
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
phant, a big bull, and not far from where Akeley was nearly 
killed by another bull]. We got a single bull elephant stand¬ 
ing about 15 yards off. I motioned my man to shoot, but 
he was decidedly jumpy over the business and made some 
noise. Round swung our friend and started to charge right 
on us. My companion let drive with one barrel and man¬ 
aged to hit one of the outspread ears! He had waited so 
long that it didn’t give me a fair chance, but one shot of the 
‘Roosevelt gun’ brought him down dead as a nail barely 
ten yards from me. On this occasion there was absolutely 
no chance of escape as we could not move a step in any direc¬ 
tion in the mass of tangled vegetation.” 
The coloration of the Cape elephant is decidedly of a 
gray cast, usually some shade of smoke-gray or light olive- 
gray, and is uniform in tint over the whole body except in 
the region of the axillae, groins, and lips, where a pinkish 
tone usually manifests itself. The calves are a lighter and 
purer gray than the adults. The coloration of the ele¬ 
phant, however, is not dependent upon the color of the 
actual skin, as in other pachyderms, but upon a roughened 
layer of dead epidermis which coats the skin. This dead 
epidermal layer is heaviest upon the crown of the head and 
over the back, where it is visible as a caked or flaking mass 
of dried grayish tissue. The tanned skins of elephants or 
the mounted specimens, as a rule, do not show the layer of 
dead epidermis, which is usually lost in the tanning process 
to which the skins are subjected, and such skins are on this 
account brighter or clearer in color and quite olivaceous- 
gray in tint. Albino specimens, such as the so-called white 
elephants occasionally found in India, are not known in 
Africa. 
The body of the East African elephant is clothed every¬ 
where by hair, but the individual hairs are so widely scat¬ 
tered and so short that they are only evident upon close 
scrutiny of the skin. Over the greater part of the dorsal 
surface the individual hairs stand half an inch or an inch 
