
FOREST AND STREAM. 

[Nov. 9, 1907. 






NATURAL LETISTORY | 




Thick-Skinned Animals in Bronx Park 
OF all the animals which impel our admira- 
tion, there are probably none upon which we look 
with so much awe as we do upon the thick- 
skinned species, connecting us as they do with 
the past ages of the mammoth and the dinothere. 
A very wonderful and comprehensive collection 
of them has recently been brought together by 
the New York Zoological Society and just at 
this time attention has been attracted to it by 
the society's request for funds with which to 
pay for several of the individuals. Some of the 
specimens are so rare that when they were of- 
fered upon the market there was nothing to do 
but to pick them up as quickly as possible, else 
the opportunity to secure any of their kind 
might have vanished forever. 
The collection, which is to be installed in the 
elephant house, when that building is completed, 
consists of four elephants, two African rhinoce- 
roses and one Indian rhinoceros. The tapirs are 
also to be housed in the same building, but they 
are not thick-skinned animals and will be kept 
there only for convenience. 
Of the elephants, the one which the society has 
had the longest, and which is so far the best 
known is the Indian elephant, Gunda. He is a 
fine male and his special value is found in the 
fact that of all the Indian elephants which one 
sees in captivity, about twenty-nine out of every 
thirty are females. The males have to be spec- 
ially ordered and this was the case with Gunda, 
who was captured wild in the interior of Assam, 
northwestern India, and came to the Zoological 
Park in May, 1904, as the gift of Col. Oliver 
H. Payne. His intelligence is marked, and in 
two days he learned to place pennies in a bank 
and ring the bell. 
One of the most characteristic features of ele- 
phants is their ears, and it is largely by this 
means that they are classified. Gunda’s ears, it 
will be seen, are rather small, somewhat irregular 
and entirely different from the ears of the other 
species in the collection. 
For five years the New York Zoological Society 
has had a standing order for a specimen of the 
colossal Soudan African elephant. It was this 
species to which Jumbo belonged and also from 
which comes the world’s record pair of elephant 



tusks, eleven feet five and one-half inches in 
length, presented to the National Collection of 
Heads and Horns by Mr, Charles T. Barney. 
A full grown animal is worth about $8,000, but 
so rare are they that the society had no imme- 
diate hopes of obtaining one. Fortune turned, 
however, and early this year Carl Hagenbeck, 
of Hamburg, offered two babies for $2,500 each. 
They were immediately accepted, arrived in good 
condition, and are now temporarily in the ante- 
lope house. They are a male and a female and 
have been named Kartoom and Sultana. 
The ears of the Soudan African elephant are 
nothing short of stupendous, the largest ones on 
record having a maximum vertical diameter of 
no less than six feet five and one-half inches, 
and a transverse diameter of four feet one and 
one-half inches. The height of the animal to 
which it belonged is estimated to have been over 
thirteen feet. 
When so much is expected in the ears of 
Soudan elephants, it is particularly gratifying to 
know that those of Kartoom and Sultana are 
perfectly satisfactory. Those of Kartoom are 
particularly immense. They overlap each other 
on the neck, they cover almost the entire shoul- 
der, and descend to a point three inches below 
the lower line of the jaw, and both are without 
a flaw. 
By far the rarest thing in elephants, however, 
is the little pigmy West African elephant named 
Congo, which, according to Prof. Noack, of the 
London Zoological Society, is the type specimen 
of a new sub-species, Elephas africanus pumilio. 
It was at first thought that he belonged to an- 
other species, Elephas africanus cyclotis, but 
closer examination proved otherwise. 
There is considerable similarity in. the ears 
of these two species, Elephas africanus pumilio, 
and Elephas africanus cyclotis, those of Congo 
being somewhat oval in shape, with a very de- 
cided lappet on the bottom. Congo differs from 
the other, not only in some minor ear markings, 
but also by the unusual shortness of the “finger” 
on the lower border of the tip of the trunk and 
the greater length of the upper “finger.” He 
also appears to have a darker skin than has the 
more frequently observed Elephas africanus 
cyclotis, He is the gift to the society of Mr. 
Charles T, Barney. 

GUNDA, THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S MALE 
INDIAN ELEPHANT. 

The society is very fortunate in being the pos 
sessor of two fine young African rhinoceroses 
Speke and Victoria. The African rhinoceros wa: 
once very common in a larger portion of Eas 
and South Africa, but over fully nine-tenths o 
the area it has now been exterminated by hun 
ters, and unless the Government is able to taki 
immediate steps for its protection, it seems tha 
its ultimate extinction is a matter of only ; 
short time. 
The female was captured in July, 190s, in th 
northern part of German East Africa, withi 
about sixty miles of the head of Speke Gulf] 
which is the southeastern arm of Lake Victoria] 
Nyanza, by an Austrian named Fischer. Lieut | 
Fischer was hunting with a party of natives wher , 
they suddenly came upon a mother rhinocero:!: 
with a baby one month old. The natives imme| 
diately decamped, but the lieutenant stood hi 
ground, shot the mother and secured the youns|: 
one. She was then slung on a pole, with he 
head resting in a gunny sack, and was carriec 
ten days’ journey to Speke Gulf. Victoria finalh 
came into he possession of Mr. Louis Ruhe, thi 
animal dealer of New York, and by him she wa 
sold to the society “for $5,000. 
The second African rhinoceros, named afte: 
the famous explorer who gave his name -to thi 
gulf, was captured at about the same place : 
year later. At Mombasa he was seen by Mr'| 
Richard Tjader, who was in Africa in the in! 
terest of the Museum of Natural History, anc: 
through his offices a purchase was effected by! 
cable for $3,000. When transportation and cari|! 
were added, the total price reached $4,000. Speki|, 
is the gift of Mr. Frederick G. Bourne. rf 
Of all the wild animals which are still to bi! 
found in their native haunts, there is none mort), 
wonderful than the Indian rhinoceros. Whe | 
fully grown he is between five and one-half anc! 
six feet tall and over ten feet long, while ove: F 
his entire body are immense armor plates o} 
thick skin articulated by thinner and more flexi |, 
ble sections. The Indian rhinoceros is rapidh 
becoming extinct, like his cousin the Africat, 
rhinoceros, and therefore peculiar interest at 
taches to the specimen in the Zoological Park, 
He is the first one to appear in the market foi), 
fifteen years. - R 
In 1906 the Maharajah of Nepal decided tc} 
have a stupendous rhinoceros hunt, and to bi« 
sure of success he turned out his entire army! 
of 20,000 men and surrounded a tract of country, 
which was known to contain the animals. Sev) 
eral large ones were killed and four young one'l’ 
were captured, but of these latter two subse 
quently died. One of the survivors went to thi| 
Hamburg Zoological Society, and the other wai 
sold by Carl Hagenbeck to the New York Zo jy 
logical Society for $6,000. 3 
The hippopotami are by no means so rare it| 
captivity as are the preceding animals. They arth 
still found in Africa in considerable numbers |y 
and moreover they breed readily in captivity}, 
The one now belonging to the society was-bort 
in the Central Park menagerie, and is the gif h 
to the society of Mr. Samuel Thorne. 
The elephant house, in which the thick-skinnec| 
animals will be kept, is one of the last of thi 
buildings to be erected in the Zoological Park}, 
and in many respects it is the culminating feature} 
filling as it does a wide gap and linking that 
northern and southern portions. In all it wil 
have accommodations for six elephants, thre¢ 
rhinoceroses, two hippopotami and four tapirs|, 
The inclosures for each of these animals ar¢ 
unusually roomy and the outside corrals are dei 
signed to provide both sunshine and shade, ath 
well as plenty of room for exercise. This is it|: 
accordance with one of the fundamental policie: it 
of the New York Zoological Society, which ihe 
that unless animals can be kept in com fortabl«|,, 
captivity they should not be kept at all. te 
In this immense building, with its massive 




































































































