80 TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS 



mals. Though possessed of a proboscis, which is 

 capable of guarding it against such dangers, it read- 

 ily falls into a pit dug for catching it, only covered 

 with a few sticks and leaves. Its fellows make no 

 effort to assist the fallen one, as they might easily 

 do by kicking in the earth around the pit, but they 

 flee in terror. 



It commonly happens that a young elephant falls 

 into a pit near which the mother will remain until 

 the hunter comes, without doing anything to assist 

 it, not even feeding it by throwing in a few branches. 

 This, no doubt, is more difficult of belief to most 

 people than if they were told that the mother sup- 

 plied it with grass, brought water in her trunk, or 

 filled up the pit with trees and effected the young 

 one's release. 



Whole herds of elephants are driven into ill con- 

 cealed enclosures which no other wild animal could 

 be got to enter, and single ones are caught by their 

 legs being tied together by men under cover of a 

 couple of tame elephants. Elephants which happen 

 to effect their escape are caught again without trou- 

 ble. Even experience does not bring wisdom. 



These facts are certainly against the conclu- 

 sion that the elephant is an extraordinarily shrewd 

 animal, much less one possessed of the power of rea- 

 soning in the abstract, with which he is commonly 

 credited. I do not think I traduce the elephant, when 

 I say it is in many things a stupid animal, and I can 

 assert with confidence that all the stories I have 



