OF WILD ANIMALS 119 



formation of the letters; and, while it was writing, the animal 

 kept its eye fixed down in an accomplished and scholar-like 

 manner." 



I can conceive how an elephant may be taught that certain 

 characters represent certain ideas, and that they are capable of 

 intelligent combinations. The system and judgment and 

 patient effort which developed an active, educated, and even 

 refined intellect in Laura Bridgman deaf, dumb and blind 

 from birth ought certainly to be able to teach a clear-headed, 

 intelligent elephant to express at least some of his thoughts in 

 writing. 



I believe it is as much an act of murder to wantonly take 

 the life of a healthy elephant as to kill a native Australian or a 

 Central-African savage. If it is more culpable to kill an 

 ignorant human savage than an elephant, it is also more culpa- 

 ble to kill an elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are 

 both morally and intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, 

 and are, in my opinion, as wholly destitute of that indefinable 

 attribute called soul as all the lower animals commonly are 

 supposed to be. 



If an investigator like Dr. Yerkes, and an educator like Dr. 

 Howe, should take it in hand to develop the mind of the ele- 

 phant to the highest possible extent, their results would be 

 awaited with peculiar interest, and it would be strange if they 

 did not necessitate a revision of the theories now common 

 among those who concede an immortal soul to every member 

 of the human race, even down to the lowest, but deny it to all 

 the animals below man. 



Curvature in the Brain of an Elephant. There is 

 curvature of the spine; and there is curvature in the brain. It 

 afflicts the human race, and all other vertebrates are subject 

 to it. 



In the Zoological Park we have had, and still have, a per- 

 sistent case of it in a female Indian elephant now twenty-three 

 years of age, named "Alice." Her mental ailment several 



