32 The Wild Elephant. 



can escape from a pursuer. When suddenly disturbed 

 in the jungle, it will burst away with a rush that seems 

 to bear down all before it ; but the noise sinks into 

 absolute stillness so suddenly, that a novice might well 

 be led to suppose that the fugitive had only halted within 

 a few yards of him, when further search will disclose 

 that it has stolen silently away, making scarcely a sound 

 in its escape ; and, stranger still, leaving the foliage 

 almost undisturbed by its passage. 



The most venerable delusion respecting the elephant, 

 and that which held its ground with unequalled tenacity, 

 is the ancient fallacy thus set out by Sir Thomas Browne 

 in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. "The elephant, it is said, 

 hath no joynts ; and this absurdity is seconded by 

 another, that being unable to lye downe it sleepeth 

 against a tree, which the hunters observing doe saw 

 almost asunder, whereon the beast relying, by the fall of 

 the tree falls also downe it-selfe and is able to rise no 

 more." ^ Sir Thomas is disposed to think that " the hint 

 and ground of this opinion might be the grosse and 

 somewhat cylindricall composure of the legs of the ele- 

 phant, and the equality and lesse perceptible disposure of 

 the joynts, especially in the forelegs of this animal, they 

 appearing, when he standeth, like pillars of flesh ; " but he 

 overlooks the fact that Pliny has ascribed the same pe- 

 culiarity to the Scandinavian beast somewhat resembling 



' Vulgar Errors, \iO<^\\\. chap. i. century, quotes Cassiodorus and accepts 



The earliest English writer who pro- his assertion that the elephant has no 



mulgated this error was Alexander joints, chap, cxliii. Neckham repeats 



Neckham, who in his treatise De the statement in his poem i?^ i,««rf/iJz<i- 



Nathris Reriun, composed in the 12th Divince Sapientia:, v. 47. 



