ANIMAL IXTELT-KCT. II9 



except the dog and monkey. The general fact that elephants 

 are habitually employed in certain parts of India for the pur- 

 poses of building, storing lumber, etc., in itself shows a level 

 of docile intelligence which only that of the dog can rival. 

 Speaking of the labor of piling timber. Sir E. Tennent says 

 that the elephant "manifests an intelligence and dexterity that 

 are surprising to a stranger, because the sameness of the ope- 

 ration enables the animal to go on for hours disposing of log 

 after log, almost without a hint or direction from his attend- 

 ant. For example, two elephants employed in piling ebony 

 and satinwood in the yards attached to the commissariat 

 stores at Colombo were so accustomed to their work that they 

 were able to accomplish it with equal precision and with 

 greater rapidity than if it had been done by dock laborers. 

 When the pile attained a certain height and they were no 

 longer able by their conjoint efforts to raise one of the heavy 

 logs of ebony to the summit, they had been taught to lean 

 two pieces against the heap, up the inclined plane of which 

 they gently rolled the remaining logs, and placed them trimly 

 on the top." Dr. Erasmus Darwin records an obser\-ation 

 which was communicated to him by a "gentleman of 

 undoubted veracity" of an elephant in India which the 

 keeper was in the habit of leaving to play the part of nurse 

 to his child when he and his wife had occasion to go away 

 from home. The elephant was chained, and whenever the 

 child in its creeping about came to the end of the elephant's 

 tether, he used gently to draw it back again with his trunk. 



An instance of the high reasoning power of the cat has 

 been thus related : " While a kerosene lamp was being filled, 

 some of the oil fell upon the back of the cat and was after- 

 wards ignited by a cinder falling upon it from the fire. The 

 cat with her back in a blaze in an instant made for the door 

 (which happened to be open) and sped up the street about a 

 hundred yards, where she plunged into the village watering 

 trough and extinguished the flame. The trough had eight or 

 nine inches of water, and puss was in the habit of seeing the 



