THE LION AND THE ELEPHANT.*
IT is not without a reason that both of the books before ui appear under the auspices of Mr. Roosevelt, who contri-; butes to the first a letter of good wishes and to the second: • a) The Book of the Leon. By Sir Alfred E. X00., Bart. London: Table Murray. [10o. ed. net.)—(2) Hunting the Elephant 55 .AfrIera,_ and other BecolLietiono of Thirteen Yuen' Wanderinae. By csaetam C. H. fitigand4 London Hamill. and Co, DOB. dd. net.] a prefase of some length dealing with protective coloration. Like Mr. Roosevelt, the authors are naturalists as well as Sportsmen, and neither is in any sense a professional hunter. Sir Alfred Pease is probably as well qualified as any man living to write a book on the lion, for his experience covers South, East, Central. and North Africa, end lie has hunted with an active and retentive mind. His book ie, indeed, touch more than a sporting record, for be given us an analysis of courage, a jeremiad about urban civilization, and a very eloquent confession of the wanderer's faith. The Briton immured in cities is to him like wild boars cooped in a sty, apt soon to become "a breed of measly.skinned, fat, soft, grunting, squealing beasts, fed on pig.wash, wallowing in filth, and liable to swine fever." Few will be found to object to these digressions:— "In lion lands there are other things to see and think over besides the game. Toughs and carious old ideas which will bite the dust there, new thoughts to be born in lion haunts, both quite worth a chase or at least to be examined through a telescope at a safe distance. Let those who denounce my heresies be generous, for mine is the losing cause."
The book is, to begin with, a compendium of information upon the habits of the greatest of big game. The lion, with the possible exception of the tiger, is the most dangerous of all quarries. It is not that he is aggressive, for unless lie is very hungry or has been wounded be will rarely attack man, but that when be is attacked lie is apt to charge, and that charge is the most dangerous thing a banter can face. His great speed gives the man little time for careful shooting, and his immense vitality makes the stopping shot one chance in a hundred. A charging lion will take half a dozen shots from a heavy gun, each of which might ultimately prove mortal, and yet have strength enough left to maul his assailant. It is the man who has oftenest faced the lion that speaks of him with most respect. Sir Alfred Pease thinks that the lions of North Africa and of the temperate climes of South Africa probably attain the greatest size, and certainly in these regions the manes tend to be heavier. They are often found in troops, as many as twenty.three having been seen together on the East African Plateau. The Man-eater is not very common, because African natives, like Indian villagers in the case of a tiger, usually combine to exact vengeance for the offence. The famous "man-eaters of Tsar° " no doubt acquired the habit from the immunity with which they found they could attack Indian coolies. Sir Alfred puts first among methods of lion-hunting, as regards sport, tracking on foot; then hunting on horseback, dismounting, of coarse, to shoot, though lions have been shot from the saddle; then hunting with dogs ; and last, night shooting from shelters by water holes or over kills. For rifles, he very properly recom- mends what a man can shoot best with. He himself uses a Mannlicher and for his second weapon a double-barrelled 10-bore ball and shot gun. Most sportsmen would prefer, Say, a '450 cordite express, but Sir Alfred points out that much of the superiority of a powerful modern rifle is lost when you are shooting at a rapidly moving object at twenty- five yards range or less. " With a charging lion, there is no time for carefully aligning delicate sights ; to hit, and to hit true once or twice, is more easy with a heavy old big-bore rifle or gun than with a powerful, short-barrelled, shun--
'450 or .500 cordite rifle." Besides this practical information, the book has copious notes on the natural history of the lion, and Major Stevenson-Hamilton, the warden of the Transvaal Game Reserve, and Mr. A. L. Butler, of the Soudan, contribute some valuable data..
The book. as we should expect, is full of excellent stories. The best is Mr. Wolbutees almost incredible experience in the Transvaal Reserve, where he was carried for a long distance by a lion till be managed to stab it in the throat. In the way of records it would he difficult to beat Mr. Hill's experi- ence in East Africa, when he sat up on a moonlight night on a tree in the centre of lifs ostrich bonus. Five lions got inside and chevied the precious birds round and round the enclosure, till Mr. Hill bagged four and wounded the fifth. In June, 1911, a young Dutchman on the Guam) Nycro, in charge of a waggon and oxen, arrived at a stream. When the oxen were turned loose they were attacked by nine lions. The Dutch- itMu jumped on the waggon and wills a '350 rifle fired ten shots in ten minutes,.. killing seven and wounding the other two. The seven lay dead round him, the furthest away being only fifteen yards. Then there was a certain. Count Wickenberg in Abyssinia, who used to gallop down his lions as if they were pigs and shoot them when close on the top of them. He killed a dozen in this way, till one took a seat behind him on the pony I Sir Alfred himself tells a curious tale of seeing an old blind lion in Algeria which travelled about with a party of Arabs, sprawling on a donkey, and was used for exorcising evil spirits. But the best tale of all, to our mind, concerns not a lion, but a rhinoceros, which one fine morning chose to charge a train on the Uganda Railway. "He twice went headlong at the carriages, striking the foot- board each time, and then retiring at a trot towards the bills with a very bloody snout, like any other anarchist running up against civilization."
Captain Stigand's book, as its title implies, is mainly about the elephant, which with him takes the place that the lion has with Sir Alfred Pease. But there is a great deal, too, about other animals, for the author has passed thirteen years in Nyasaland, North-Eastern Rhodesia, East Africa, Uganda, and the Lado enclave, and his holidays from his official work have been spent in laborious hunting in little-known country. He has been badly mauled by a lion, and he has been tossed and severely gashed by a rhinoceros. His hunting grounds have been so different as the frosty uplands of the Aberdare Mountains and the interminable swamps of the Upper Nile. Captain Stigand has no philosophy of life to preach, but has abundance of acute observation and sound practical good sense to give to the world. His chapter on protective coloration may be recommended to those interested in the subject as a most persuasive argument from the agnostic standpoint. He believes that there is no protective colora- tion among the larger game, except such as is accidental; but in the case of insects there do now and then appear to be wonderful instances of mimicry and adaptation. But it is difficult to found a theory on these cases, for one insect which exactly resembles a particular flower will be usually found on the wrong plant, and another will imitate the pod of a tree which is not found in that part of the country. Besides, in the larval stage, when protection is most needed, we do not find these instances of adaptation. We agree with the author and Mr. Roosevelt that we have as yet no material to base any theory of protective coloration OD. Here is another interesting note for the naturalist :— " I believe that the sense of smell is in much more direct connexion with the brain than the sense of sight. Even with us human beings, who have lost this sense to a great extent, there is nothing like a scent to suddenly and vividly recall forgotten memories. A sound or sight will appear familiar, but the mind will generally have to grope after what it recalls, whilst with a scent the memory is an instantaneous flash. Perhaps this, then, is the reason why the duller-witted beast responds as much morn quickly and is so much mire affected by the sudden noxious smell of the human being than he is by his sight."
The book is full of notes on native habits and modes of thought, and shows a gift of understanding which goes far to explain Captain Stigand'a remarkable success in districts like the Lado. He thinks little of the skill of the average native in the chase, but for the few good trackers and gun-bearers that he has met with he has the highest praise. This ready appre- ciation of merit in Ilia servants is one of the pleasantest features of a very pleasant book.
The hunting tales are all excellent, for the author has had amazing experiences. There is the story of that day on the Aberdare Mountains when for six hours the party were in the midst of elephants, which never stampeded, though they continually had the hunters' wind and several shots were fired ; the tale of the elephant shot in the flooded river; and the melancholy tale of the huge bull in the Lngware country. which was lost after a two days' chase. Humour is never very far distant from these recitals. The author seems to have enjoyed his encounters with outlandish tribes, and his stock of frock- coats, bought at four shillings each and used as presents, set the fashion in the bush. He can see the funny side of native stupidity, which is really a high test of humour when a man has suffered from it. And there are incidents like this :—
" I think I have never seen anything funnier than two belated lions I met near the Ndurugn, British East Africa, returning home with their stomachs dragging on the ground. A. herd of kongoni was following them and running after them to look at them. I never saw anything look so sheepish and ashamed as those two lions. Both were much too full to be comfortable, and
were subject to the stare of a whole inquisitive herd in broad daylight. They looked intensely deprecatory and self-conscious, as if they wished to say, 'It wasn't us at all that killed one of you last night; we are just taking a walk and wouldn't do harm to anyone. I wish you wouldn't stare so, it makes us feel uncom. fortable.' "
Here is an interesting contribution to that perplexing subject, the psychology of native mendacity :—
" There is generally some one thing true in the native state- ment. It is a nucleus of fact round which a nebula of fiction has formed. For instance, a man rushes in and says that there is a solitary big male Puku, with enormous horns, just behind my tent Ongoing out, I see nothing, but on proceeding a abort way, two hornless females are pointed out in the distance. The nucleus of fact here is Puku ; he said Pau and there really were some. A Dorobo bunter says suddenly, as we are walking along, There goes a lion.' I look up and see a hyaena. The nucleus is, ' There goes.' A native rushes in perspiring at every pore and says that he has this moment seen ten bull elephants passing close by. One walks out fifteen miles and is shown the five-day-old spoor of one elephant. The nucleus of truth in this is, 'elephant passing.'"
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