14 The Wild Elephant. 



Pigs are constantly to be seen feeding about the 

 stables of tame elephants, which manifest no repugnance 

 to them. As to smaller animals, the elephant undoubt- 

 edly evinces uneasiness at the presence of a dog, but 

 this is referable to the same cause as its impatience of a 

 horse, namely, that neither is habitually seen by it in the 

 forest ; and it would be idle to suppose that this feeling 

 could amount to hostility against a creature incapable of 

 inflicting on it the slightest injury.' The truth I appre- 

 hend to be that, when^they meet, the impudence and 

 impertinences of the dog are offensive to the gravity of 

 the elephant, and incompatible with his love of solitude 

 and noiseless repose. Or, as regards the horse and the 

 dog, may it be assumed as an evidence of the sagacity 

 of the elephant, that the only two animals to which it 

 manifests an antipathy, are the two which it has seen 

 only in the company of its greatest enemy, man ? One 

 instance has certainly been attested to me by an eye- 

 witness, in which the trunk of an elephant was seized in 

 the teeth of a Scotch terrier, and such was the alarm of 

 the huge creature that it came at once to its knees. The 

 dog repeated the attack, and on every renewal of it the 

 elephant retreated in terror, holding its trunk above its 

 head, and kicking at the terrier with its fore feet It 

 would have turned to flight but for the interference of its 

 keeper. 



' To account for the impatience ful. A tame elephant has been obsen-ed 



manifested by the elephant at the pre- to regard with indifference a spear 



sence of a dog, it has been suggested directed towards his head, but to shrink 



that he is alarmed lest the latter should timidly from the same weapon when 



attack his feet, a portion of his body of pointed at his feet, 

 which the elephant is peculiarly tare- 



