ELEPHANTS AND THEIR WAYS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 4

ELEPHANTS AND THEIR WAYS

No More The Tusker. Bv G.( G. Rushby. W. H. Allen. 205 pp. This is an interesting tale of elephants and their ways written by a man who has had considerable practical experience to bring to the task. Rushby has been a professional elephant hunter, coffee planter, gold miner and onetime deputy game warden of Tanganyika. He has controlled the Rungwa reserve and the Lake Rungwa Controlled Area, and this book is the product of many years experience associated w’ith African wild life. A book about elephants could too; easily be simply a book about one species, but the author is able to draw upon many unusual facts and so lift the book from the ordinary into something that is quite fascinating. Being one of the higher mammals, the elephant exhibits certain human behaviour characteristics: “they: are as different in appearance and temperament as human beings are in any village or! town in the world. There are tall ones, short ones, fat ones. serious ones and comedians." Mother care can be noted, and it is the usual thing for the cow elephant to! care for the young in what can only be described as a thoughtful way. Many people have noted such behaviour patterns, and when these are associated with the great brain size of elephants, the natural thought is, “why are they not more intelligent than human beings?" Fortunately, for homo sapiens, it is not simply a matter of brain weight but one of the ratio between the weights of the brain and body. The brain-body weight ratio of an elephant is 1:560 whereas in man it is 1:35, and therein lies the answer. In spite of their great bulk, elephants can move with surprisingly little noise, and several incidents in the book amplify this ability. They have a wide variety of sounds available by which means they communicate, and certain uses of the|

(body also assist in this direction. Elephant meat is eater, either dried or fresh, the prime cuts being taken from the region of the temple, the meat from the trunk being “as tough as a piece of lorry tyre.” From time to time the hunter finds himself living off the land and there is some interesting reading provided along these lines which, “inter alia," offers a suggestion of the kind of life lived by the primitive African black before the coming of the white man. There was meat and honey in plenty, 1 with vegetables appearing a little lower down the paleoI lithic menu. The modern hunter enjoys his pipe at the end of the day and when camp stocks run out he may, if he so desires, turn to a native ■ substitute which is sometimes very good indeed. When really pushed for tobacco “dry elephant dung may be smok- | ed and this varies from sea- : son to season in colour, l texture and flavour, but is not recommended.” Little wonder. . The chapter on superstition and witchcraft is interesting, and as much of Africa is still ;just a stone’s throw from civilisation, both factors play a significant part in the proceedings. “One superstition which is common to all native hunters throughout Africa is that the hunter must not, on any account sleep with a woman on the night before going elephant hunting. Should it be that none of the hunters had slept with a woman on the previous night and yet an elephant turned nasty and caused trouble, then undoubtedly the wife of i the hunter, or one of the I party, had been unfaithful I whilst the hunt was jn pro- i gress.” With the advent ofi the muzzle-loading musket in 1 Africa, many natives became professional hunters and! organised themselves along ■ the lines of the guilds of medieval England. Mr Rush- i i by describes how he was ad-|

mitted to one such secret: society amidst much mumbo- 1 jumbo and solemn ritual. Those with an interest in I firearms and calibres, plus i the best methods of employ-1 ing these on a hunt, are provided with a good deal of highly professional advice. There is mention of several hunters who used these techniques. and Captain James Sutherland, described as “The greatest of all the elephant hunters who operated during the last decade of the nineteenth century” is given special attention in an historical survey of hunters and hunting. The main game parks and reserves are des-i cribed in an authoritative manner, and it is clear that I the author indulged in a cer-| tain amount of poaching from time to time in his earlier! years, but this was trivial compared to native poaching. Ivory found its devious way to the free port of Zanzibar I and the narrative of these doings is complete with murders. smugglers and danger-1 ous patrols. In order to protect crops, a form of control is necessary I and such controlled shooting is carried out by men of the Game Department. The control policy, plus the shooters who put it into effect, are well described and for good i measure, the book concludes' I with three chapters on maneating lions. This book was I written by a man who once I killed eighteen elephants in I one day, and who once had his hat lifted off his head by a wild! elephant's tail. His command i of the subject is undisputed,l and it is fortunate for the! reader that he has been able I to record his experiences in an enjoyable narrative style. It is | a general rule of paleontology: that great size is a sign that a' species is nearing the end of its natural span of time. The I elephant does look “out of date” when compared to other; mammals, but it should not disappear from the familiar scene in the near future. Also, I it will never again be hunted ! in the style as so well des- ' cribed in this book.