384 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



had reached him, that such an animal commanded the highest 

 prices. Now the tables are so entirely turned, that we never 

 hear of any one being carried off by these animals, whether 

 native or not, except in the remote interior of the forests of 

 Bengal and Africa, into which the heavy and formidable rifle 

 of the British sportsman has "not yet carried its ounce-ball 

 terrors. While hunting on elephants has become a sport, 

 attended with so little danger, that even the placid nerves 

 of a clerk from Threadneedle street may now venture to 

 partake of the indulgence, fortified with a little cotton stuffed 

 in his ears to drown the roars of the brute, and a little sal 

 volatile to stay his spirits when the blood begins to flow. 



The dreaded tiger now skulks in caves and deepest jungles, 

 until frightened forth by the maddening and incessant play 

 of rockets, grenades, and every other species of torturing 

 fire-works. While the lordly lion waits behind the bush for 

 the assault of his foes, and is not known to charge, even 

 until several times wounded. In yielding to the mastery 

 man has thus established, these animals have lost nothing 

 of their original characteristics, except so far as their rela- 

 tions to him are concerned — and in this the difference is 

 rather, as we have before remarked, to man the mechanical 

 intelligence, than to man the animal. 



Nor are these gradual ameliorations of temper and habits, 

 so far as mankind are concerned, confined to quadrupeds 

 alone — birds, and all other creatures, partake of them, in 

 degrees proportioned to their intelligence. It is notorious 

 how soon game birds, and the whole family of rapacious 

 birds, learn to distinguish a man with a gun from a man 

 without a gun, and with such sagacity will they do this, too, 

 that we are seldom able to surprise them, by any stratagem 

 of concealed weapons. 



And yet the white-headed eagle remains the white-headed 

 eagle, so far as its relations to the rest of the world are 

 concerned. It continues to thrash the vultures, to make 



