20 Wild Beasts 



tures, whose sagacity is considered to be so extraordinary, 

 do not move off abreast instead of in single file, as is 

 their custom, and thus voluntarily encounter the greatest 

 amount of resistance, and ensure the most disturbance, it 

 is not easy to understand. In all measures relating to 

 evasion, as contradistinguished from precaution, these 

 beings occupy an inferior position : their color makes 

 them nearly indistinguishable in those places they mostly 

 occupy, and the footfall is naturally noiseless, but they 

 employ none of those arts in which many species are 

 expert, and do not even confuse their trail. This defi- 

 ciency in cunning cannot be accounted for by the off- 

 hand explanation that the elephant, conscious of his 

 strength, has no need to conceal himself. He has fully 

 as much, if not more reason to do so, than many other 

 animals, and the experience by which the latter have 

 profited has been common to them all. 



Those inferences which have oftentimes been drawn 

 from the social life of elephants will scarcely stand the 

 tests furnished by sociology. " A herd of elephants," 

 observes Leveson, " is not a group that accident or attach- 

 ment may have induced to associate together, but a 

 family," between whose members "special resemblances 

 attest their common origin." Reasoning from statements 

 like this, it is concluded that results accrue from an 

 ■ aggregation of relatives similiar to those which obtain in 

 human families ; — that they are, in effect, groups of the 

 same kind, saved from disruption and made amenable to 

 improvement by mutual aids, forbearances, affections, and 

 distributions of office. But those resemblances discovera- 

 ble do not warrant the comparison. 



