in. LONG-NOSE, LONG-NECK, AND STUMPY. 51 



much of the sagacity of animals. How inscrutable must 

 be the ways of men to the intelligence of the elephant ! 

 How can we expect him to interfere and do something 

 useful in so mysterious and complex a business ? Employed 

 in tiger shooting and in war, he might well come to regard, 

 were he able to consider the matter rationally, assassination 

 as part of the normal progress of things human, in which 

 elephantine interference was neither expected nor desired. 

 What astonishes me is that he is able to throw himself 

 into the strange business of human life with such apparent 

 zest. For there are many well-authenticated instances of 

 his modifying his conduct intelligently to meet exceptional 

 circumstances in his daily routine. 



We are so apt, too, to use misleading expressions and 

 thus to credit animals with a kind of knowledge which is 

 to them quite impossible. We read, for example, "Most 

 wild animals possess a certain amount of botanical know- 

 ledge which guides them in their grazing." To speak of 

 this instinctive preference of certain food-stuff as botanical 

 knowledge is, of course, ridiculous. I happen to prefer 

 carrots to parsnips, but I base thereon no claim to botanical 

 knowledge. Sir Samuel Baker tells of an elephant which, 

 having found fruit beneath a tree, looked up at the laden 

 boughs, and then retiring for a few feet, rammed his 

 great hollow brow against the stem and shook down a 

 plentiful shower of the coveted fruit. Sagacious old fellow ! 

 But this implied neither botanical knowledge nor acquaint- 

 ance with the laws of gravitation. Botany and physics lie 

 in a region of thought beyond the grasp of the most 

 sagacious of brutes. 



With all his great size and strength and cleverness for 

 he is a wonderfully clever fellow the elephant is mighty 

 timid at times. Moolah Bux, a magnificent animal, was 

 the proud bearer of Sir Samuel when his men were driving 



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