i6o TJie Wild Elephant. 



The knowledge of this infirmity led to the popular belief 

 recorded by Phile, that the elephant had hoo hearts^ 

 under the respective influences of which it evinced fero- 

 city or gentleness \ subdued by the one to habitual 

 tractability and obedience, but occasionally roused by 

 the other to displays of rage and resistance.' 



In the process of training, the presence of the tame 

 ones can generally be dispensed with after two months, 

 and the captive may then be ridden by the driver alone ; 

 and after three or four months he may, so far as regards 

 docility, be entrusted with labour ; but it is undesirable, 

 and even involves the risk of its life, to work an elephant 

 too soon ; it has frequently happened that a valuable 

 animal has laid down and died the first time it was tried 

 in harness, from what the natives believe to be " broken 

 heart," — -certainly without any cause inferable from injury 

 or previous disease.^ It is observable, that till a captured 

 elephant begins to relish food, and grow fat upon it, he 

 becomes so fretted by work, that it kills him in an in- 

 credibly short space of time. 



' At7r>i^s Se(j>a<TLV evnoprjirai KopSias ' " made vigorous resistance to the plac- 



Koi. Tj) filf elvai. 9vij.ikov to 9r)piof ing of a collar on its neck, and the 



Eis aKparr; Kivr](Tiv ripedicrfiLevov, people were proceeding to tighten it, 



T^ 5e Trpocrrji/es koll 0pacrvT7)To; ^eVor. when the elephant, which had lain 



Kal nrj ixei' aiiTuiv aKpoacr9ai. tmi' Aoyioi/ down asif quite exhausted, reared sud- 



O vs ai' Tis 'Ii'Sbs ev Ti.9aaevujv Ae'yoi, denly on the hind quarters, and fell on 



nj7 Se irpbs auTou; Toi;s i/o^eis eiri- its side — dead!" (P. 104. ) 



Tpexeiv Mr. Strachan noticed the same lia- 



Ei5 Tas TraAaias eKTparrev KaKovpyw. bility of the elephants to sudden death 



Phile, Expos, de Elcph. 1. 126, &c. from very slight causes; " if they fall," 



^ Captain Yule, in his Narrative he says, " at any time, though on plain 



of an Embassy to Ava in 1855, records ground, they either die immediately, or 



an illustration of this tendency of the languish till they die ; their great 



elephant to sudden death ; one newly weight occasioning them so much hurt 



captured, the process of taming which by the fall." (Phil. Trans, a.d. 1701, 



was exhibited to the British Envoy, vol. xxiii. p. 1052.) 



