THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 51 



trates the abdomen of the foremost elephant, who feeling the 

 smart, instead of retreating backwards blindly rushes on with 

 augmented speed, and thus is mortally wounded. 



In the neighbourhood of the Cape, and in other parts of 

 the coast of Africa, where commercial settlements are situ- 

 ated, and fire-arms have been introduced, those weapons are 

 commonly employed. This method of destruction requires 

 great courage, patience, and capability of bearing fatigue, and 

 is attended with considerable personal risk to the hunters. 



A third method, which requires still more address, consists 

 in enticing the elephant to pursue a mounted hunter on the 

 open plain, while the huge pursuer is ham-stringed by a 

 sabre cut inflicted by another hunter behind him. 



One might infer from the previous summary of the present 

 condition of the African elephant, as relates to man, that his 

 disposition was naturally vicious, and rendered him incapable 

 of domestication. But there is no real ground for such a 

 conclusion. Were the Africans raised to the same degree of 

 civilization as the Asiatics, there seems little doubt but that 

 their species of elephant might be made equally useful in a 

 state of servitude ; for the specimen now living in the 

 French national menagerie has not shown less intelligence 

 than the Asiatic elephant. It has learnt the same tricks, 

 and has performed the same motions and exercises, under the 

 same circumstances, and in the same period of time. It 

 is as affectionate to those who feed him, and as obedient to 

 their commands. 



The Carthaginians, moreover, employed elephants for all 

 the purposes that they have served in other parts of the ci- 

 vilized world ; and they must have derived their supply from 

 the species under consideration. 



Cuvier gives the following concise account of the ancient hi- 

 story of the elephant. u Homer speaks frequently of ivory, but 

 knew not the animal whence it was derived. The first of the 

 Greeks who saw the elephant were Alexander and his soldiers, 

 when they fought with Porus ; and they must have observed 

 them well, for Aristotle gives a complete history of this ani- 

 mal, and much truer in its details than those of our moderns. 

 After the death of Alexander, Antigonus possessed the great- 

 est number of elephants. Pyrrhus first brought them into Italy 

 4/2 years after the foundation of Rome : they were disembarked 

 at Tarentum. The Romans to whom these animals were en- 

 tirely strange, gave them the name of Leucanian Bulls. Curius 

 Dentatus, who captured four of these animals from Pyrrhus, 

 brought them to Rome for the ceremony of his triumph. 

 These were the first which were there exhibited, but after- 



v 9 



