ELEPHANT. 



country, I must confess I was in a terrible quaking, ! 

 so much so that I believe the hairs on my head stood 

 quite erect. At the same time it appeared to me as 

 though I had several pails of water thrown over me, 

 without my being able to stir from the spot, until I 

 saw this huge creature so near me that he was almost 

 on the point of laying hold of me with his trunk. 

 At that instant I fortunately had the presence of 

 mind to take to my legs, and to my no small astonish- 

 ment I found myself so swift that I thought I hardly 

 touched the ground. The beast, however, was pretty 

 close upon my heels ; but having at last got to the 

 wood, and crept away from him under the trees, the 

 elephant could not easily follow me. I am quite 

 certain that he could not see me in the place where 

 I was at first, and that therefore he must have found 

 me out by the scent." So much for the escape of 

 Dirk Marcus, the Dutch boor, whose story no doubt 

 contains a good deal of the marvellous. Indeed it is 

 not an incurious matter in the history of mankind, 

 that while, upon all ordinary subjects, the Dutch are 

 the most matter-of-fact people on the face of the 

 earth, they are the greatest romancers in matters of 

 adventure and of natural history ; and it is possible, 

 indeed probable, that more unfounded but marvellous 

 stories of this kind originated with the early Dutch 

 navigators than with any other people on the face of 

 the earth. 



But even Dirk Marcus was probably not so brave 

 an elephant hunter as the wild bushmen of the Cape, 

 whom the Dutch settlers used to be as zealous in 

 hunting and shooting in cold blood, as they were in 

 hunting elephants, or in carrying on a campaign of ex- 

 termination against the antelopes. The bushmen not 

 only shoot elephants with their poisoned arrows, bu 

 come to close quarters with their assagais or spears 

 with which they stick the great animal all over till he 

 is bristled like a porcupine, and the pain often causes 

 him to accelerate his own death ; as from his natura 

 instinct of falling upon and crushing the lion, when i 

 springs on the hinder part of his body, he falls upon 

 the spears, and by this means pushes them home t< 

 his vitals. When the inhabitants of one of the kraal 

 or villages of those rude people catch an elephant, i 

 is a day of as much joy as when the Greenlander 

 capture a whale. The flesh of the elephant is cut up 

 in ribbons, as is done with beef in South America, 

 and in many parts of Old Spain ; and this elephant 

 beef, by being suspended in the open air, and dried 

 in the intense heat of the sun, can be kept for a con- 

 siderable time, and is said not to be very unpalatable. 

 The trunk is an especially delicate morsel, because 

 the muscles in it, though "very numerous, are small, 

 and much more delicate in their fibres than the com- 

 mon muscles of motion in the body of the animal. 

 The feet, also, are very much prized, though chiefly 

 on account of the cartilaginous substance on the soles. 

 To a European, however, an elephant feast would, 

 probably, be but a sorry meal. 



Independently of his living only in the wild state, 

 and inhabiting woods of more savage character than 

 those of Asia, there is a sullenness in the air and 

 expression of the African elephant. His head is car- 

 ried much lower, and less gracefully than that of the 

 Asiatic species ; and the apparent shortness of the face, 

 the want of squareness in the outline, and the bullet- 



411 



The greater size of the tusks, too, in proportion to 

 ;hat of the animal, tends to increase this expression. 

 3ut notwithstanding all these disadvantages of appear- 

 nce, the African elephant is a highly interesting as 

 veil as powerful animal ; and one almost regrets that, 

 ven for the sake of bushmen feasts and ivory trinkets, 

 e should have been hunted down with so much assi- 

 duity in those wild woods which, as they are not taken 

 jossession of by civilised man, might have remained 

 as birthright pastures of the elephant. In conse- 

 quence of this there are now few or no elephants 

 except at a considerable distance from the Cape, 

 though in the woods farther to the north they are still 

 numerous. 



THE FOSSIL ELEPHANT (Elephas primogenitus). It 

 is doubtful whether as much interest has not been 

 excited, not among the students of nature only, but 

 even by the mass of the inhabitants in those places 

 where its remains are abundant, by this extinct ani- 

 mal, as by at least the African species of the living 

 one. The characters are : the skull lengthened and 

 the forehead concave, as in the Asiatic elephant ; the 

 under jaw much more obtuse than in either of the 

 living species ; the grinders larger, with the enamel 

 disposed in transverse bands or ribands set closely 

 together ; and the sockets of the tusks much more 

 produced than those of the others, as if these organs 

 had some more laborious office to perform. This 

 peculiar lengthening of the sockets, and general en- 

 largement of the anterior extremity of both jaws, is 

 conclusive evidence that the trunk of this elephant 

 must have been thicker at its base or junction with 

 the head ; and renders it probable that, if not a more 

 universal instrument, it may have been a more powerful 

 one than the trunk of either of the existing elephants. 

 From the skeletons, it is not probable that this lost 

 animal was of taller stature than his living congeners ; 

 but from the enlargement of some of the processes of 

 the bones, and various other circumstances connected 

 with the skeleton, there is some reason for believing 

 that it must have been of thicker body and more 

 robust frame, than are the elephants which still 

 exist. The following cut will furnish some idea of the 

 skeleton of this animal ; and any one who has seen a 

 live elephant will feel no great difficulty in imagining 

 it clothed with flesh. 



shape of the cranium, all conspire to take off from 

 him that expression of sagacity which is, probably, 

 more imaginary than real iu his oriental congener. 



It is not for what this animal has been in itself when 

 alive, and acting its part in living nature, that it claims 

 our attention ; for it forms a curious section in the 



history of human belief, as well as in that of progres- 

 sive zoology. If its remains had occurred only in 

 those countries over which the conquests of the ancient 



