80 SUPERFICIAL OBSERVERS. 



is it reasonable to suppose that he would continue to labour for man, instead 

 of waving his keepers adieu and turning into the nearest jungle ? 



Let us consider whether the elephant displays more intelligence in its 

 wild state than other animals. Though possessed of a proboscis which is 

 capable of guarding it against such dangers, it readily falls into pits dug for 

 catching it, and only covered with a few sticks and leaves. Its fellows 

 make no effort to assist the fallen one, as they might easily do by kicking 

 in the earth around the pit, but flee in terror. It commonly happens that 

 a young elephant falls into a pit, near which the mother will remain until 

 the hunters come, without doing anything to assist it, not even feeding it 

 by throwing in a few branches. This, I have no doubt, is more difficult 

 of belief to most people than if they were told that the mother supplied 

 it with grass, brought water in her trunk, or filled up the pit with fagots, 

 and effected her young one's release. Whole herds of elephants are driven 

 into ill-concealed enclosures which no other wild animals could be got to 

 enter, and single ones are caught by their legs being tied together by men 

 under cover of a couple of tame elephants. Elephants which happen to 

 effect their escape are caught again without trouble ; even experience does 

 not bring them wisdom. These facts are certainly against the conclusion 

 that the elephant is an extraordinarily shrewd animal, much less one 

 possessed of the power of abstract thought to the extent with which he 

 is commonly credited. I do not think I traduce the elephant when I say 

 it is, in many things, a stupid animal ; and I can assert with confidence 

 that all the stories I have heard of it, except those relating to feats of 

 strength or docility performed under its keeper's direction, are beyond its 

 intellectual power, and are mere pleasant fictions. 



It often happens that persons who do not understand elephants give 

 them credit for performing actions which are suggested to them, and in 

 which they are directed, by the mahout on their necks. There is no secret 

 so close as that between a horse and his rider, or between an elephant and 

 his mahout. One of the chief characteristics in the domestic elephant's 

 temperament is, as before stated, its obedience, and it does many things at 

 the slightest hint from its mahout, whose directions are not perceived by an 

 onlooker unacquainted with the craft of elephant-guidance. This has led 

 to such mistakes as Sir Emerson Tennent makes * in describing the conduct 

 of tame elephants while engaged in capturing wild ones in Ceylon, when he 

 says : " The tame ones displayed the most perfect conception of every move- 

 ment, both of the object to be attained and the means to accomplish it. 

 They saw intuitively a difficulty or a danger, and addressed themselves un- 

 * The Wild Elephant, by Sir J. Emerson Tennent 



