THE LIVING WORLD. 
533 
far exceeds in size the female. His tusks are arched, long and tapering, 
from six to eight feet in length, and weighing from fifty to a hundred pounds. 
Estimating by the annual exports of ivory (and making no allowance for the 
animals diverted to other uses) thirty thousand elephants a year are now being 
slaughtered. The ivory brings in England about one dollar and a quarter a 
pound, and is of much greater value than that furnished by the Asiatic elephant. 
The elephant, whether spraying his back in the streams of Asia and Africa, or 
exhibiting in a zoological garden his wonderful control of his proboscis, or 
carrying children about 
on its back, is always 
an object of interest. 
Stories about elephants 
are numerous and 
always exciting. The 
African elephant is, as 
travellers tell us, nat¬ 
urally amiable, and 
will attack man only 
when infuriated. But 
if the elephant does 
make a charge, it well 
behooves the hunter 
and his steed to make 
up in agility what they 
will find themselves to 
lack in speed. Unlike 
the Asiatic elephant, 
the African species is 
not vulnerable in the 
head, and he who fails 
to know or to remem¬ 
ber this will not be 
exposed to the same 
forgetfulness another 
time, even though he 
escape the conse¬ 
quences of his mistaken 
course of action. 
The natives insist 
that the elephant is hunting the tiger by means of the elephant. 
naturally jealous of the 
rhinoceros, and that this feeling extends so far that upon the mere sight of the 
rhinoceros the elephant breaks heavy branches from the trees and proceeds to 
belabor the rhinoceros and drive it hither and thither in the style of the lion 
and the unicorn, so familiar in nursery rhymes. 
The mother elephant will protect her calf at all expense, and it is quite 
affecting to see her take her calf between her fore legs and herself stand the 
brunt of all harm. A herd of elephants having been discovered swimming down 
the river and not yet having learned the possible danger of allowing the approach 
