as the Indian. Many individual African elephants, very
intelligent, have been trained, successfully, and have given good
accounts of themselves. For my own part I am absolutely sure that
when taken in hand at the same age, and trained on the same basis
as the Indian species, the African elephant will be found mentally
quite the equal of the Indian, and just as available for work or
performances.

No negro tribe really likes to handle elephants and train them.
The Indian native loves elephants, and enjoys training them and
working with them. It is these two conditions that have left the
African elephant far behind the procession. The African elephant
belongs to the great Undeveloped Continent. He has been, and he
still is, mercilessly pursued and slaughtered for his tusks. All
the existing species of African elephants are going down and out
before the ivory hunters. We fear that they will all be dead one
hundred years from this time, or even less. A century hence, when
the last _africanus_ has gone to join the mammoth and the
mastodon, his well protected wild congener in India still will be
devouring his four hundred pounds of green fodder per day, and the
tame ones will be performing to amuse the swarming human millions
of this overcrowded world.

In the minds of our elephant keepers, familiarity with elephants
has bred just the reverse of contempt. Both Thuman and Richards
are quite sure that elephants are the wisest of all wild animals.

Despite the very great amount of trouble made for Keeper Thuman by
Gunda, the Indian, and Kartoum, the African, Thuman grows
enthusiastic over the shrewdness of their "cussedness." He is