MISCELLANY 



757 



MISCELLANY. 



Capture of a Herd of Elephants. A 



correspondent of Land and Water tells of 

 the capture, in the Mysore district, India, 

 of a herd of elephants, numbering forty-nine 

 head. An irrigating canal winds through 

 a dense jungle, at some points approaching 

 a small river, at others stretching away 

 from it into the jungle. In one place a 

 bend of the canal forms, with the river, an 

 inclosure in the shape of a horseshoe, 

 containing about fifteen acres of wooded 

 ground. To this place elephants resort 

 during the monsoon, crossing the canal at 

 three or four points where the banks have 

 become trodden down by constant use. In 

 order to trap the entire herd, two lines of 

 chains were stretched across the river at 

 the ends of the horseshoe, and a trench 

 was dug on the river-bank to cut off escape 

 on that side. The elephants having crossed 

 into the inclosure, the fords were barricaded 

 with cocoa-nut trees, the canal deepened at 

 those places, and two deep trenches cut 

 from the canal to the river. Fires were 

 kept up at night on the banks of the canah 

 Meanwhile a deep, circular trench was dug, 

 inclosing about an acre of ground, and two 

 parallel trenches were also dug, leading 

 from the horseshoe to this small inclosure. 

 Drop-gates were made to prevent the ani- 

 mals leaving this keddah when once they 

 had entered it. 



A large force of men were now directed 

 to drive the herd into the keddah. The 

 first attempt failed, the elephants stamped- 

 ing back into the horseshoe after a few of 

 them had entered the inclosure. A second 

 effort was crowned with success. First came 

 a female with her calf; then seven other fe- 

 males, and after a while on came the entire 

 herd with a rush, males, females, and calves, 

 of all sizes, " like a herd of rather large pigs, 

 jostling and pushing one another through 

 the gate-way." When the last was in, 

 down went the gate, and they were all se- 

 cured. The catching of the elephants one 

 by one was the work of several days. " The 

 men ride in among them on tame beasts, 

 and put ropes round their legs and necks, 

 after which the tame elephants drag them 

 out in spite of all resistance, and they are 



chained one by one to trees to be trained at 

 leisure. They do not mind the tame ele- 

 phants mixing with them at all, even with 

 men on their backs, but they object strong- 

 ly to the men on the ground, who have to 

 put on the ropes. The clever way in which 

 the tame elephants help is wonderful : they 

 move close up to the wild ones, and under- 

 stand how to put their legs so as to shield 

 the men from all kicks ; they take hold of 

 the wild ones' legs and trunks with their 

 own trunks, and are invaluable." 



Habits of the Cotton- Worm. Accord- 

 ing to Mr. Aug. R. Grote, the cotton-worm 

 dies out every year, with its food-plant, and 

 its next appearance is always the result of 

 immigration. He has observed that the 

 appearance of the worm in the cotton-fields 

 is always heralded by flights of the moth. 

 The worm is always heard of to the south- 

 ward at first, and never to the northward 

 of any given locality in the cotton-belt. 

 Mr. Grote never could discover any traces 

 of the insect in any stage during the months 

 preceding the appearance of the first brood 

 heralded by the moth, and after the cotton 

 was above the ground. Hence he concludes 

 that while the cotton-plant is not indige- 

 nous to the Southern States (where it be- 

 comes an annual) the cotton-worm moth 

 may be esteemed not a denizen but a visit- 

 ant, brought by various causes to breed in 

 a strange region, and that it naturally dies 

 out in the cotton-belt, unable to suit itself 

 as yet to the altered economy of its food- 

 plant and to contend with the changes of 

 our seasons. Possibly in the southern por- 

 tions of Texas, or in the Floridian peninsu- 

 la, the cotton-worm may be able to sustain 

 itself during the entire year. Its true home, 

 however, appears to be the West Indies, 

 Mexico, and Brazil, where the cotton-plant 

 is perennial. 



Coal in California. Dr. J. C. Cooper, 

 formerly connected with the State Geologi- 

 cal Survey of California, made some inter- 

 esting remarks at a late meeting of the 

 California Academy of Sciences on the sub- 

 ject of California coal. The frequent re- 

 ports in the newspapers of discoveries of 

 valuable coal deposits in different parts of 

 the State he characterized as misleading, 



