Shorter Notice
Wild Elephant Chase. By Heinrich Ober- johann, (Dennis Dobson. 15s.)
FIAT the lure of adventure still attracts us is amply illustrated by the ready sale of books on its many facets. Big-game hunting, remote though it is from our humdrum round, has probably the largest general Public : the idea of man pitting himself against the beasts of the jungle catches the Iniagination, and the real state of affairs, In which the beasts, however savage in tooth and claw, have little chance against man's armoured safaris, is rarely appreciated. Mr. Oberjohann was not, in fact, after trophies. His aim, which he spent four years large the jungle pursuing, was to capture the large elephants tliat roam the shores of Lake Chad. His slaughtering of the animals, Wholesale though it appears from his pages, was only incidental to this end. Sad as the killing of fully grown animals is, it is less harrowing and futile than the capture and death of the elephant babies ; the recital of the dying of nineteen of these large, Pathetic and helpless creatures is more than Can be read at a sitting, and one recalls angrily the remark of the English Resident of Bonin. Province to Mr. Oberjohann, reported earlier in the book, " You can . shoot as many as you like." Unpalatable though the subject matter may be, the author has written a warm and kindly tribute to the character of the elephant, a beast so honourable that he will not attack a sleeping man. The book is without the grace and humanity of Elephant Bill nor has it the quality that makes Death in the After-,
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