286 MAMMALIA-ELEPHANT. 



burdens of two hundred pounds weight, and place them on their shoulders 

 they take in this trunk a great quantity of water, which they throw out around 

 them at seven or eight feet distance ; they can carry burdens of more than 

 a thousand weight upon their tusks ; with their trunk they break branches 

 of trees, and with their tusks they root out the trees. One may judge of 

 heir strength by their agility, considering at the same time the bulk of their 

 body ; they walk as fast as a small horse on the trot, and when they run, 

 they can keep up with a horse on full gallop, which seldom happens in their 

 wild state, except when they are provoked by anger, or frightened. The 

 tame elephants travel easily, and without fatigue, fifteen or twenty leagues 

 a day ; and when they are hurried, they may travel thirty-five or forty 

 leagues. They are heard at a great distance, and may be followed very 

 near on the track, for the traces which they leave on the ground are not 

 equivocal ; and on the ground where the steps of their feet are marked they 

 are fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter. 



When the elephant is taken care of, he lives a long while even in capti- 

 vity. Some authors have written, that he lives four or five hundred years ; 

 others, two or three hundred ; and the most credible, one hundred and 

 twenty, thirty, and even one hundred and fifty years. Whatever care, how- 

 ever, is taken of the elephant, he does not live long in temperate countries, 

 and still less in cold climates. The elephant which the king of Portugal 

 sent to Louis XIV., in 1668, and which was then but four years old, died in 

 his seventeenth, in January, 1681, and lived only thirteen years in the 

 menagerie of Versailles, where he was treated Avith care and tenderness, 

 and fed with profusion. He had every day four pounds of bread, twelve 

 pints of wine, two buckets of porridge, with four or five pounds of bread, 

 two buckets of rice boiled in water, without reckoning what was given to 

 him by visitors ; he had, besides, every day one sheaf of corn to amuse him- 

 self; for, after he had eaten the corn ears, he made a kind of whip of straw, 

 and used it to drive away the flies; he delighted in breaking the straw in 

 small bits, ^vhieh he did with great dexterity with his trunk ; and, as he 

 was led to walk daily, he plucked the grass and eat it. 



The common color of the elephant is ash gray, or blackish. The white 

 are extremely scarce; some have been seen at different times in the Indies, 

 where also some are found of a reddish color. 



The elephant has very small eyes, compared with his enormous size, but 

 they are sensible and lively ; and what distinguishes them from all other 

 animals, is their pathetic, sentimental expression. He seems to reflect, to 

 think, and to deliberate ; and never acts I ill he has examined and observed 

 several times, without passion or precipitation, the signs which he is to 

 obey. Dogs, the eyes of which have much expression, are animals too 

 lively to distinguish their successive sensations ; but as the elephant is 

 naturally grave and sedate, one may read in his eyes the order and outward 

 appearance of his interior affections. 



