Chap. 10.] ELEPHANTS. 257 



separate from the males, just the same way as with other 

 cattle. Elephants, when tamed, are employed in war, and 

 carry into the ranks of the enemy towers filled with armed 

 men ; and on them, in a very great measure, depends the ulti- 

 mate result of the battles that are fought in the East. They 

 tread under foot whole companies, and crush the men in their 

 armour. The very least sound, however, of the grunting of 

 the hog terrifies them : 58 when wounded and panic-stricken, 

 they invariably fall back, and become no less formidable for 

 the destruction which they deal to their own side, than to 

 their opponents. The African elephant is afraid of the Indian, 

 and does not dare so much as look at it, for the latter is of 

 much greater bulk. 59 



CHAP. 10. (10.) THE BIRTH OF THE ELEPHANT, AND OTHER 



PAETICULAES EESPECTING IT. 



The vulgar notion is, that the elephant goes with young ten 

 years -, 60 but, according to Aristotle, it is two years only. He 

 says also that the female only bears once, and then a single young 

 one ; that they live two hundred years, and some of them as much 

 as three hundred. The adult age of the elephant begins at the 

 sixtieth year. 61 They are especially fond of water, and wander 

 much about streams, and this although they are unable to swim, 

 in consequence of their bulk. 62 They are particularly sen- 

 sitive to cold, and that, indeed, is their greatest enemy. They 

 are subject also to flatulency, and to looseness of the bowels, but 



58 JElian, Anim. Nat. B. i. c. 38, states that the Romans employed this 

 mode of terrifying the elephants brought against them by Pyrrhus. B. 



59 That this was the general opinion among the ancients, we learn from 

 Polybius, JElian, Livy, Diodorus Siculus, and others. Cuvier remarks, 

 that this may have been the case with the animals from Barbary, or the 

 north of Africa, but that it is not so with those from the middle or south 

 of that continent. B. 



60 It has been stated, in a Note to chap. 5, that Mr. Corse found the 

 period of the gestation of the elephant to be between twenty and twenty- 

 one months. B. 



61 Julian, Anim. Nat. B. iv. c. 31, considers the age of sixty to be the 

 prime period of their life, not the commencement of their prime. B. 



62 This remark is incorrect ; when the water is sufficiently deep, it swims 

 with ease ; and if the end of the trunk remains exposed to the atmosphere, 

 it can dive below the surface, or swim with the body immersed. B. 



VOL. II. S 



