PLANTERS’ TRIALS

Dunstan Times, 13 March 1933, Page 3

PLANTERS’ TRIALS

WILD ANIMALS IN CEYLON bears the most dangerous. Wild animals add an interest to the life of planters in the wilder parts of Ceylon, according to Mr Geoffrey Pickthall, manager for the Galphele Rubber and Tea Estates Company, who arrived in Sydney recently. Mr Pickthall said that the most dangerous of the animals were bears. In the breeding season mothers with cubs attacked on sight, and in the remote hill villages many of the natives had their faces scarred by blows from paws. The bears did not attempt to eat their victims, who stood a chance of survival if they pretended to be dead. Then thev were released while the mother and her cubs departed to seek honey and roots. Captive elephants occasionally ran amok, but the mahouts generally knew when the elephant’was preparing for an attack, and no harm was done. The wild elephants did much damage, and sometimes blocked the road which ran through dense jungle between Kandy and Trincomalee, by standing in the road and refusing to budge. A motor car party had had a narrow escape recently, when an elephant swept his trunk to and fro over the car. The party escaped by crouching on the floorboard/;. Leopards seemed to have a partiality for mail carriers, whom they killed on lonely roads. It appeared that the leopards knew what paths the men took, and waited for them. Mr Pickthall is a member of the Fly Fishers’ Club, and is on his way to New Zealand to catch trout.