54 Wild Beasts 



position. Probably a large part of the present inhabitants 

 of the earth have seen animals who, while contending for 

 some possession, acted in a similar manner ; but they 

 were not elephants, nor were the circumstances of a 

 well and a siege at hand to set them off, and produce 

 an impression that the actual incident does not justify. 

 The grief of captive elephants over their situation is a 

 subject upon which many fine remarks have been made. 

 Colonel Yule ("Embassy to Ava") states that numbers 

 die from this cause alone ; but yaarbahd, either in its 

 dropsical or atrophic form, is what chiefly proves fatal to 

 them, and this is brought on by the sudden and violent 

 interruption of their natural way of life. According to 

 Strachan, Sanderson, and other experts, the disorder is 

 due to an overthrow of functional balance ; something 

 which is sure to induce disease whenever it occurs. Ste- 

 rility, temporary failure of milk in females with calves, 

 together with the various effects already mentioned, may 

 be referred to the same cause. It is not said that ele- 

 phants never die of grief ; still less, that this is impossible. 

 Any animal highly organized enough to feel intense and 

 persistent sorrow may perish. Pain, either physical or 

 mental, is intimately connected with waste of tissue and 

 paralysis of reparative action. Bain's formula that " states 

 of pleasure are concomitant with an increase, and states 

 of pain with a decrease, of some, or all, of the vital func- 

 tions," is not strictly correct as it stands ; still the truth it 

 is intended to convey remains indisputable. Grant-Allen 

 ("Physiological ^Esthetics ") defines pleasure as a "con- 

 comitant of the healthy action of any or all of the organs 



