AN IMITATIVE ANIMAL. 280 



freshest and most verdant parts of the forest ; and 

 when one district becomes parched and barren, he 

 will forsake it for years together, and wander far 

 and wide in quest of other and better pastures. 



It is a commonly received opinion, I believe, that 

 the elephant always sleeps standing, or reclining, it 

 may be, against a tree or rock ; or, as regards 

 Southern Africa, against one of those gigantic ant- 

 hills* one there so frequently meets with ; but this 

 is not altogether the case ; for though, as a rule, 

 this may be his usual mode of reposing, yet in 

 regions where he is but little molested, he is not 

 unfrequently found stretched at full length on the 

 sward; and, in saying this, I am fully borne out 

 by my friend Frederick Green, who, like myself, 

 was at one time somewhat sceptical as to the ele- 

 phant ever sleeping otherwise than in an upright 

 position. 



The elephant, according to Delegorgue, is a 

 very imitative animal very much more so, I con- 

 fess, than I ever had the most distant idea of; 

 for, after speaking of a herd of those animals 

 recently disturbed by himself and party, he goes on 

 to say: 



" A portion of the troop ought, from the nature 

 of the country, to have passed within two hundred 

 paces of us, but as they made for the river, where 



* My ideas of the nests of the termites, or white ants, were first 

 realised at Schraelcns Hope, n missionary station in Dumara Land, 

 some of the abodes of these interesting, though destructive, insects 

 measuring as much as one hundred feet iu diameter at the base, and 

 rising to about twenty feet in height. 



I" 



