FOOD. 291 



knees. Boulandja discharges his gun his elephant 

 assumes the same attitude as the other two; and 

 all the rest, even to the eleventh, kneel in suc- 

 cession. 



" Great God ! Twenty guns forty guns charged, 

 if we had possessed them. ' Reload, lads, and 

 quickly.' But the laugh that this grotesque scene 

 created, deprived us of strength and the power 

 of motion. 



" I had time, however, to fire at the last of the 

 troop as they were retreating, and, as a sou cent r, 

 lodged a ball in its buttocks. 



" One alone remained on the spot, but standing 

 in a defiant attitude, when a ball in the brain 

 caused him to sink dead to the ground, like a 

 tower that had been undermined." 



" Never during my Jii^er life," Delefforgue goes 



O / O O O O 



on to say, " have I witnessed a similar scene to 

 that described above. Meanwhile I am far from 

 disbelieving that with animals collected together ;i 

 spirit of imitation does exist." 



The food of the elephant consists of grasses, 

 herbs, as also of succulent roots, of the situation 

 of which he is advised by his exquisite sense of 

 smell. To obtain them he turns up the ground 

 with his tusks, in the manner of a hog, so that ar 

 times whole acres may be seen where one would 

 almost suppose the plough had been doing its work. 

 He also feeds largely on the shoots, smaller branches, 

 and roots of certain trees, to gain access to which 

 he applies one of his tusks, as we would a crow- 

 bar, to the roots of the tree, to loosen the soil, and 



u 2 



