ELEPHAS. 391 
a pond, filled its trunk with dirty water, and returned and squirted it 
over the tailor and his work! ‘This story accredits the elephant with 
appreciating the fact that throwing dirty water over his work would be 
the peculiar manner in which to annoy a tailor. How has he acquired 
the knowledge of the incongruity of the two things, dirty water and 
clean linen? He delights in water himself, and would therefore be 
unlikely to imagine it objectionable to another. If the elephant were 
possessed of the amount of discernment with which he is commonly 
credited, is it reasonable to suppose that he would continue to labour 
for man instead of turning into the nearest jungle? The elephant 
displays less intelligence in its natural state than most wild animals. 
Whole herds are driven into ill-concealed inclosures which no other 
forest creatures could be got to enter; and single ones are caught by 
being bound to trees by men under cover of a couple of tame elephants, 
the wild one being ignorant of what is going on until he finds himself 
secured. Escaped elephants are re-taken without trouble; even ex- 
perience does not bring them wisdom. ‘Though possessed of a proboscis 
which is capable of guarding it against such dangers, the wild elephant 
readily falls into pits dug in its path, whilst its fellows flee in terror, 
making no effort to assist the fallen one, as they might easily do by 
kicking in the earth around the pit. It commonly happens that a 
young elephant falls into a pit, in which case the mother will remain 
until the hunters come, without doing anything to assist her offspring— 
not even feeding it by throwing in a few branches. 
“When a half-trained elephant of recent capture happens to get loose, 
and the approach of its keeper on foot might cause it to move off, or 
perhaps even to run away altogether, the mahout calls to his elephant 
from a distance to kneel, and he then approaches and mounts it. The 
instinct of obedience is herein shown to be stronger than the animal’s 
intelligence. When a herd of wild elephants is secured within a 
stockade, or kheddah, the mahouts ride trained elephants amongst the 
wild ‘ones without fear, though any one of the wild ones might, by a 
movement of its trunk, dislodge the man. This they never do.” 
On the other hand we do hear of wonderful cases of reasoning on the 
part of these creatures. I have never seen anything very extraordinary 
myself; but I had one elephant which almost invariably attempted to 
get loose at night, and often succeeded, if we were encamped in the 
vicinity of sugar-cane cultivation—nothing else tempted her; and many 
a rupee have I had to pay for the damage done. ‘This elephant knew 
me perfectly after an absence of eighteen months, trumpeted when she 
saw me, and purred as I came up and stroked her trunk. I then gave 
her the old signy and in a moment she lifted me by the trunk on to her 
head. I never mounted her any other way, and, as I use d to slip off by 
a side rope, the constant kneeling down and getting up was avoided. 
