Alleged antipathy to other Animals, ii 



diles, 2 by boars, i by a bear, and 68 by seriDents (the 

 great majority of the last class of sufferers being women 

 and children, who had been bitten during the night), and 

 1 6 by elephants. Little more than three fatal accidents 

 occurring annually on the average of five years, is cer- 

 tainly a very small proportion in a population estimated 

 at a miUion and a half, in an island abounding with 

 wild elephants, with which, independently of casual en- 

 counters, voluntary conflicts are daily stimulated by the 

 love of sport or the hope of gain. Were the elephants 

 instinctively vicious or even highly irritable in their tem- 

 perament, the destruction of human life under the cir- 

 cumstances must have been infinitely greater. It must 

 also be taken into account, that some of the accidents 

 recorded may have occurred in the rutting season, v/hen 

 even tame elephants are subject to fits of temporary fury, 

 known in India by the term viiist^ in Ceylon mudda,—ci 

 paroxysm which speedily passes away, but during the fury 

 of which it is dangerous even for the mahout who has 

 charge of them to approach those ordinarily the gentlest 

 and most familiar. 



Again, the elephant is said to " entertain an extraordi- 

 nary dislike to all quadrupeds ; that dogs running near it 

 produce annoyatice ; that it is alarmed if a hare start 

 from her form ; " and from Pliny to Bufifon every natu- 

 ralist has asserted its supposed aversion to swine. ^ These 



^ Menagerie^, eic: "The Elephant," elephant to swine is embodied in the 



ch. iii. In the Anglo-Saxon Epistola text and is thus rendered in the Latin 



Alexandri nd Aristofelefn, viliich. has version: "Pervenimusdemum ad silvas 



been printed by Cockayne in his Kar- Indorum ultimas ; ubi cum castra collo- 



rativncvltE Anglice cotiscripiie, the cavissemus, ceperarftns velle epulari sub 



belief in the alleged antipathy of the nocte hora xi ; cum subito pabulatores 



