I40 



The Wild Elephant. 



in to loose from the tree the ropes that bound him, and 

 two tame elephants being harnessed to the dead body, it 

 was dragged to a distance without the corral. 



When every wild elephant had been noosed and tied 

 up, the scene presented was truly oriental. From one to 

 two thousand natives, many of them in gaudy dresses 

 and armed with spears, crowded about the enclosures. 

 Their families too had collected from great distances to 

 see the spectacle ; women, whose children clung like 

 little bronzed Cupids by their sides ; and girls, many of 

 them in the graceful costume of that part of the country, 

 — a scarf, which, after having been brought round the 

 waist, is thrown over the left shoulder, leaving the right 

 arm and side free and uncovered. 



At the foot of each tree was its captive elephant ; 



elapse before it was fastened on by the 

 small black ants of Ceylon, and a line 

 formed to lower it safely to the floor. 

 Here was a substance which, to our 

 apprehension at least, is altogether 

 inodorous, and yet the quick sense of 

 smell must have been the only conductor 

 of the ants. It has been observed of 

 those fishes which travel overland on 

 the evaporation of the ponds in which 

 they live, that they invariably march in 

 the direction of the nearest water, and 

 even when captured, and placed on the 

 floor of a room, their efforts to escape 

 are always made towards the same 

 point. Is the sense of smell sufficient 

 to account for this display of instinct 

 in them ? or is it aided by special 

 organs in the case of the others ? Dr. 

 McGee, formerly of the Royal Navy, 

 writing to me on the subject of the 

 instant appearance of flies in the vicinity 

 of dead bodies, says : " In warm cli- 



mates they do not wait for death to 

 invite them to the banquet. In Jamaica 

 I have again and again seen them settle 

 on a patient, and hardly to be driven 

 away by the nurse, the patient himself 

 saying, ' Here are these flies coming to 

 eat me ere I am dead.' At times they 

 have enabled the doctor, when other- 

 wise he would have been in doubt as to 

 his prognosis, to determine whether the 

 strange apyretic interval occasionally 

 present in the last stage of yellow fever 

 was the fatal lull or the lull of recovery ; 

 and ' What say the flies? ' has been 

 the settling question. Among many, 

 many cases during a long period I have 

 seen but one recovery after the assem- 

 bling of the flies. I consider the fore- 

 going as a confirmation of smell being 

 the guide even to the attendants, a 

 cadaverous smell has been perceived to 

 arise from the body of a patient twenty- 

 four hours before death." 



