In following wild elephants, sportsmen often have favorable opportunities to observe the habits and customs of the great game in their native wilds; and on such an occasion a fight between two tuskers was witnessed. Such an instance is recorded in the following: “We ran towards the place where the sounds of contest were increasing every moment: a deep ravine at last only separated us from the combatants, and we could see the tops of the bamboos bowing as the monsters bore each other backwards and forwards with a crashing noise in their tremendous struggles. As we ran along the bank of the nullah to find a crossing, one elephant uttered a deep roar of pain, and crossed the nullah some forty yards in advance of us to our side. Here he commenced to destroy a bamboo clump (the bamboos in these hills have a very large hollow, and are weak and comparatively worthless) in sheer fury, grumbling deeply the while with rage and pain. Blood was streaming the while from a deep stab in his left side high up. He was a very large elephant, with long and fairly thick tusks, and with much white above the forehead: the left tusk was some inches shorter than the right. The opponent of this Goliath must have been a monster indeed, to have worsted him. “An elephant-fight, if the combatants are well matched, frequently lasts for a day or more, a round being fought every now and then. The beaten elephant retreats temporarily, followed leisurely by the other, until, by mutual consent, they meet again. The more powerful elephant occasionally keeps his foe in view till he perhaps kills him: otherwise the beaten elephant takes himself off for good on finding he has the worst of it. Tails are frequently bitten off in these encounters. This mutilation is common amongst rogue elephants, and amongst the females in a herd. In the latter case, it is generally the result of rivalry amongst themselves.