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Show 7 ' Jr!IS! HE elePnant ls tne beat Jf known and at the same time the least A'XV known of all wild anl-Rjp1 anl-Rjp1 malB. Paradoxical aB this may sound. It Is nevertheless true. VS Nearly every one has seen an elephant and j nearly every one lmag-w lmag-w ines he knows what one looks like. But this popular Impression Impres-sion as well as most of the beliefs about the elephant are erroneous. In the first place the elephants we see here In America are Indian elephants. ele-phants. They are undersized, even the largest of them. A full-grown African elephant Is nearly three times the size 'of Jumbo, which was the largest elephant ever brought to America. I have shot several sev-eral specimens which stood over thirteen thir-teen feet and which weighed at least twice as much as Jumbo. Next to the monkey, the elephant Is the wisest and most Intelligent of all animals. I am not saying this of the domesticated Indian elephant, but of the African elephant In his native state. And the African elephant Is always a huge, wild beast. He is never domesticated. During the past two years that I spent in British East Africa and Uganda studying the elephant as he has lived for centuries, I learned several sev-eral things about him that entitles him to be called the most intelligent of all animals, the monkey alone excepted. ex-cepted. In many respects he surpasses the monkey, but the latter's Intelligence more nearly approaches our own, and for that reason we must consider him the highest type of Intelligence. Muci to sny surprise, I discovered that the Iwflr elephant Is rarely a fighter. fight-er. Indeed, there Is little danger from him. The generally accepted theory that the big bulls are not found In the big herdu Is a fallacy. The bull elephants that are found roaming alone are almost invariably senile gentlemen who have been cast off by ft herd. While I succeeded In getting three splendid specimens of bull elephants the finest specimen Is still at large. I was unable to get him, for the reason that he lives In the center of a herd of 700 elephants, who guard him night and day. These herds of elephants have cow leaders. The leader is usually an old animal with an ugly disposition. The cows protect the bulls, and the moment mo-ment they scent danger they crowd around them In order to prevent them from being shot. If they can see the hunters they will charge them, leaving enough of their number to guard the bull. Their sense of smell Is very acute. They can detect the presence of a man a thousand yards off, but unless he Is moving they can't see him, even If he is within a hundred yards. When they catch a whiff of wind tainted by man the cow elephants charge in that direction and it is a hundred to one that they will locate the person. If it happens that a hunter can get near enough to shoot a bull elephant the cows gather around the bull and try to carry him away. I saw several cows' vainly try to carry off a big bull elephant that I had Bhot. If he had been able to make any effort ef-fort himself they would have succeeded, succeed-ed, but th bullet from my rifle had finished him, and after trying for several sev-eral minutes to lift him up and get IIWIW IMIIllllllllll II HIIIIIWIIIflHIIMHlll him in motion the cows ran off and left him. These African elephants have many signals which they use to communicate communi-cate among themselves; for instance, when a cow gets the wind of a hunter she signals "on guard," and immediately imme-diately every elephant in the herd stops grazing and listens with trunk to the ground. They are as silent as the grave. Even when a shot among them causes a stampede and the forest resounds re-sounds with the first crash of their moving, they can disappear without making the slightest noise. They can move so silently that I have often come within fifteen or twenty yards of a big beast, mistaking his trunk and forefeet for trees in the jungle. On several occasions the beasts receded re-ceded so quickly and so quietly that I lost them altogether. When they want to they can make more noise than any animals In the world. A herd of two or three hundred hun-dred will trample down an entire native na-tive village and all the farms around it with such noises that can only be compared to an earthquake. Again a herd will slide through the forest so quietly than you can't hear them ten yards away. As their senses of smell and 'hearing are acute, they rarely fall into the elephant pits which the natives dig to capture them. I don't suppose one pit in a hundred accomplishes its mission. When the elephants go through the forests they hold their trunks close to the ground, and by tapping every now and then then can detect any pit, no matter how skillfully concealed, before stepping step-ping into It. The moment -they strike any ground that is the least bit suspicious they tap it carefully and make wide detours. de-tours. Of course, when a herd Is stampeded they haven't time to investigate in-vestigate the ground and then they sometimes fall into the pits. The generally acepted theory that the calves are only to be found with cows is also a fallacy. The cows are the leaders and the fighters of the herds, so it is only natural that they should turn over their offsurlng to be cared for by the bulls when they themselves are busy. And that is exactly ex-actly the case. I have seen bull elephants playing with the calves and looking after them on numerous occasions. The fact that you see a couple of calves does not indicate that a cow is close by. Their papa may be in charge of them. It is only a matter of a few years until the African elephant will be extinct. ex-tinct. Most of the fine specimens have been killed off already. The herds that are roaming the jungles have little ivory, and are, therefore, immune from elephant hunters. How-1 ever, as civilization spreads, the herds are being destroyed, for the reason that they are a menace to the safety of the natives, besides being the destroyers de-stroyers of much property. Now that they are suspected of carrying car-rying sleeping sickness, their doom is sealed. For this reason I am anxious to return to Africa as soon as possible to complete the specimens for my group. Unless I do so no museum will be able to group elephants as they are in all their glory. I inspected hundreds of elephants without finding any really fine specimens. speci-mens. Mrs. Ackley and I shot three bulls having tusks each weighing over 100 pounds. But what I am after particularly par-ticularly Is a bull with tusks weighlntS 200 pounds, a full-grown animal. Many elephant hunters have killed three and four hundred animals without with-out finding as large tusks as we did, but we were on the lookout only for the finest specimens. These fine specimens speci-mens are very rare, for the reason that when a bull develops tusks of fifty pounds, which is quite an early age. perhaps twenty-five years, he becomes be-comes the target of every hunter, black or white, who sets eyes on him. Thus it is only the more crafty bull elephants that, seeking the protection of large herds or clinging to the more inaccessible regions such as dense forests, for-ests, managed to survive to a ripe old age and develop a growth of ivory. There is one old bull, perhaps th most splendid specimen in Africa, well known in Uganda, who has been seen by many hunters. He Is so well protected pro-tected by a large herd of aggressive cows, who charge on the slightest Intimation In-timation of danger, that no one has been able to reach 1in. On my return to Uganda I intend to find him and eventually install him in the Museum of Natural History |