lo The Wild Elephaiit. 



" wield " its tusks as the deer and the buffalo can wield 

 their horns. ^ Nor is it easy to conceive under what 

 circumstances an elephant could have a hostile encounter 

 with a rhinoceros or a tiger, since their respective pur- 

 suits in a state of nature can in no way conflict. 



Towards man the elephant evinces shyness, arising 

 from love of sohtude and dislike of intrusion ; any alarm 

 exhibited at his appearance may be reasonably traced to 

 the slaughter which has reduced their numbers ; and as 

 some evidence of this, it has always been observed in 

 Ceylon that an elephant manifests greater impatience of 

 the presence of a white man than of a native. Were its 

 instincts to carry it further, or were it influenced by any 

 feeling of animosity or malignity, it must be apparent that, 

 as against the prodigious numbers that inhabit the forests 

 of the island, man would wage an unequal contest, and 

 that of the two, one or other must long since have been 

 reduced to a helpless minority. 



Official testimony is not wanting in confirmation of this 

 view : in the returns of io8 coroner's inquests in Ceylon, 

 during five years from 1849 to 1855 inclusive, held in 

 cases of death occasioned by wild animals, 15 are re- 

 corded as having been caused by buftaloes, 6 by croco- 



' "The Correspondoicia oi Madrid more attacks, which the elephant re- 

 gives the following account of a fight sented by killing him with his tusks, 

 between a Ceylon elephant and two The conqueror did not seem in the 

 bulls, which took place at Saragossa : — least excited, but quietly drank some 

 ' The elephant was walking quietly water offered by his keeper, and ate 

 about the arena when the first bull several ears of Indian corn. A second 

 v^as released and rushed at it with all bull was then released, and in a few 

 his might. The elephant received his minutes suffered the same fate as the 

 antagonist with ereat coolness, and first.'" [Globe, Nov. 9, 1864.) The 

 threw him down with the utmost ease. Tiiries say^ the elephant killed it "with 

 The bull ro=e again and made two n ikriist ol\u%l\\ski" 



