People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1896 — ELEPHANTS IN INDIA. [ARTICLE]

ELEPHANTS IN INDIA.

Xo Om Allowed to Shoot Them Without Special Permission. Nobody may shoot an elephant, says the London Telegraph, on the Annamulle or Tipperah hills or anywhere else throughout India and Ceylon without permission unless it be a “rogue,” or plainly dangerous and destructive. The capture of the wild elephant and his careful training are things carried out under an admirable and scientific system, which gives to the administration in all its hranohes and to the native courts a superb staff of massive and faithful servants, the oommissariat and artillery elephants. * Although they will seldom or never breed in captivity, the grand creatures are easy to keep and manage, invaluable for many special purposes, and at their demise whatever tusks they may oarry go to the world’s stock of ivory. The older it is the better generally its quality. But, in any case, how senseless It seems to extirpate the living source of this beautiful commodity, as the reckless hunters and ignorant native chiefs and merchants are still allowed to do in central Africa I When shall we see the governments of these various regions sensible enough to perceive and proclaim that

live elephants are very much more valuable even commercially than dead ones, and that the preservation of these stately and serivoeable animals shall be henceforward a fixed policy for African benefit? , It has been truly remarked that directly the native and foreign hunters are oonvinoed that one live elephant is worth dozens of tusks they will .be as keen to preserve the animal as they now are to exterminate him. We might plead earnestly, even upon the ground of sostheticism and natural science, for the protection in future of the noble beast, ■whose majesty and tranquillity of mien so well beoome his silent haunts and philosophic, harmless existence. The ears of those, however, who massacre the inDooent giant to cut from him 20 or 80 pounds of material for paper knives and shoe horns would be closed to such remonstrances. The best hope of all who understand the value of the olephant for Africa is that even the most ruthless of hft’ assassins may oome to learn that they are destroying their own markets. The rest is for official authorities to da But oertain it is that if decided measures be not promptly taken there will be no elephants to save and, we shall see in another continent the shameful human sin and folly perpetrated which Las stripped Amerioa of every free living vestige of her noble droves of bison.