Page:The Wonders of the Jungle Book 2.djvu/27

Rh day, when the elephants have had enough to eat, they reach the river and have also enough to drink. Is not that ave clever method of providing both food and drink for the herd?

If the herd sleep near the bank that night, they start from there the next morning their search for food; and they usually go into the jungle by the same path by which they came. But on returning to the river to drink that night, the leader need not bring them back by exactly the same path.

The fact that they did not have enough to eat right near the river shows that the jungle is not very thick there; so the elephants will have no trouble in making a fresh path, a little higher up the river, or a little lower down. A wise leader usually does that: he leads the herd to the river slightly higher up lower down, and so he makes a slightly different curve through the jungle. Why? Because if he kept exactly the curve from the jungle to the river every day, the herd would eat up all the leaves along that path in a few days. So, by changing the curve a little from time, he time to allows fresh leaves to grow there meanwhile.

You now understand why the president of