Rogue Elcpliants. 49 



them. Another conjecture is, that being ahiiost univer- 

 sally males, the death or capture of particular females 

 may have detached them from their former companions 

 in search of fresh alliances.^ It is also believed that a 

 tame elephant escaping from activity, unable to rejoin 

 its former herd, and excluded from any other, becomes 

 a " rogue " from necessity. In Ceylon it is generally 

 believed that the rogues are all males (but of this I am 

 not certain), and so sullen is their disposition that 

 although two may be in the same vicinity, there is no 

 known instance of two rogues associating, or of a rogue 

 being seen in company with another elephant. 



They spend their nights in marauding, often around 

 the dwellings of men, destroying plantations, trampling 

 down gardens, and committing serious ravages in rice 

 grounds and yaung coco-nut plantations. Hence from 

 their closer contact with man and his dwellings, these 

 outcasts become disabused of many of the terrors which 

 render the ordinary elephant timid and needlessly 

 cautious ; they break through fences without fear ; and 

 even in the daylight a 7-ogue has been known near Ambo- 

 garamoa to watch a field of labourers at work in reaping 

 rice, and boldly to walk in amongst them, seize a sheaf 

 from the heap, and retire with it leisurely to the jungle. 

 By day they generally seek concealment, but are fre- 



' Buchanan, in his Survey of Bha- they meet, and are said to kill annually 



.^(^or<7, p. 503, says that solitary males three or four people." Livingstone 



of the wild buffalo, "when driven from relates the same of the solitarj' hippo- 



the herd by stronger competitors for potamus, which becomes soured in 



female society, are reckoned very dan- temper, and wantonly attacks the pass- 



gerous to meet with ; for they are apt ing canoes. ( Travels in South Africa, 



to wreak their vengeance on whatever p. 231.) 



E 



