THE PLAGUE OF FIRE 165 flagration ; there on that black, burnt ground is the delicate tracery in white ash, undisturbed by the breeze, of every twig of the skeleton of a tree, fallen victim.

Little puffs of smoke fitfully shoot up, and the predatory birds swing by. Sometimes the vermilion flames will run a race fifty miles up the bank with the persistent north wind. Days after the sweet green shoots appear, and the buck come round to feed.

Methods of combating the ravages of this scourge are the study of the Woods and Forests Department, and blocks of country are reserved wherein no man may shoot, while patches in strategical positions are cleared. In the Sennaar province this seems to have met with a great degree of success, 9,552 acres having suffered in 1908, as against 65,000 in the previous year, though perhaps the Department would not claim credit for the whole of the difference.

After the effects of fire, the destructive pranks of elephants have most to be reckoned with, for the greater part of the wooded banks of the river in elephant country had suffered from their attentions.

Here, there, and everywhere were hundreds of the slender trees broken and bent to the ground, where the leaf-eating monsters could more easily feed. At intervals were trees uprooted whole, a fragment of broken tusk occasionally lying by as evidence of a penalty paid.

Being sarcastic by nature, the elephant refuses