A Rogue. 47 



have had extensive facilities for obsen^ation, doubt 

 whether the fondness of the female elephants for their 

 offspring is so great as that of many other animals ; as 

 instances are not wanting in Ceylon, in which, when 

 pursued by the hunters, the herd has abandoned the 

 young ones in their flight, notwithstanding the cries of 

 the latter for protection. 



In an interesting paper on the habits of the Indian 

 elephant, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 

 1793, Mr. Corse says : " If a wild elephant happens 

 to be separated from its young for only two days, 

 though giving suck, she never after recognises or acknow- 

 ledges it," although the young one evidently knows its 

 dam, and by its plaintive cries and submissive approaches 

 solicits her assistance. 



If by any accident an elephant becomes hopelessly 

 separated from his own herd, he is not permitted to 

 attach himself to any other. He may browse in their 

 vicinity, or resort to the same places to drink and to 

 bathe ; but the intercourse is only on a distant and con- 

 ventional footing, and no familiarity or intimate asso- 

 ciation is under any circumstances permitted. To such 



those tender maternal feelings, which female wild beasts that probably had 



the loss of her kittens had awakened lost their young. For it is not one 



in her breast ; and by the complacency whit more marvellous that Romulus 



and ease she derived to herself from and Remus in their infant state should 



procuring her teats to be drawn, which be nursed by a she wolf than that a 



were too much distended with milk ; poor little suckling leveret should be 



till from habit she became as much de- fostered and cherished by a bloody 



lighted with this foundling as if it had Grimalkin." (White's Selborne, lett. 



been her real offspring. This incident xx.) General Sleaman in his narra- 



is no bad solution of that strange cir- tive of a journey through Oude gives 



cumstance which grave historians, as some remarkable narratives of children 



well as the poets, assert of exposed suckled by wolves and found associating 



children being sometimes nurtured by with their cubs. 



