The question of the disappearance of the elephant here and throughout Africa is, as every one knows, only one of a few years. It is hard to think why this kindly and sagacious creature should have to be exterminated; why this vast store of animal energy, which might be turned into so much useful work, should be lost to civilization. But the causes are not difficult to understand. The African elephant has never been successfully tamed, and is therefore a failure as a source of energy. As a source of ivory, on the other hand, he has been but too great a success. The cost of ivory at present is about half-a-sovereign per pound. An average tusk weighs from twenty to thirty pounds. Each animal has two, and in Africa both male and female carry tusks. The average elephant is therefore worth in pounds sterling the weight in pounds avoirdupois of one of his tusks. I have frequently seen single tusks turning the scale upon ninety pounds, the pair in this case being worth nearly £100 sterling,--so that a herd of elephants is about as valuable as a gold mine. The temptation to sacrifice the animal for his tusks is therefore great; and as he becomes scarcer he will be pursued by the hunter with ever-increasing eagerness. But the truth is, sad though the confession be, the sooner the last elephant falls before the hunters bullet the better for Africa. Ivory introduces into the country at present an abnormal state of things. Upon this one article is set so enormous a premium that none other among African products secures the slightest general attention; nor will almost anyone in the interior condescend to touch the normal wealth, or develop the legitimate industries of the country, so long as a tusk remains. In addition to this, of half the real woes which now exist in Africa ivory is at the bottom. It is not only that wherever there is an article to which a fictitious value is attached the effect upon the producer is apt to be injurious; nor that wherever there is money there is temptation, covetousness, and war; but that unprincipled men, and especially Arabs, are brought into contact with the natives in the worst relation, influence them only in one, and that the lowest, direction, and leave them always worse than they find them--worse in greed, in knavery, in their belief in mankind, and in their suspicion of civilization. Further, for every tusk an Arab trader purchases he must buy, borrow, or steal a slave to carry it to the coast. Domestic slavery is bad enough, but now begins the long slave-march with its untold horrors--horrors instigated and perpetuated almost solely by the traffic in ivory. The extermination of the elephant, therefore, will mark one stage at least in the closing up of the slave-trade. The elephant has done much for Africa. The best he can do now for his country is to disappear forever.