The Elephant 67 



drink. After what Inglis and Hallet say to the same 

 effect of tigers, after St. John's observations upon red 

 deer, and Lloyd's on the Scandinavian fox, inductive 

 reasoning like this does not seem at all incredible. Amral, 

 chief of the Namaqua Hottentots, told Galton and Anders- 

 son that on one occasion he and others were in pursuit of 

 a herd of elephants, and at length came to a wagon-track 

 which the animals had crossed. Here the latter, as was 

 seen by their spoor, had come to a halt, and after carefully 

 examining the ground with their trunks, formed a circle 

 in the centre of which their leader took up his position. 

 Afterwards individuals were sent out to make further in- 

 vestigations. The Raad, or debate, this chieftain went on 

 to say, must have been long and weighty, for they (the 

 elephants) had written much on the ground with their 

 probosces. The decision evidently was that to remain 

 longer in that locality would be dangerous, and they 

 therefore came to the unanimous resolution to decamp 

 forthwith. Attempts to overtake them, Amral went on to 

 say, were useless; for, though they followed their tracks 

 till sunset, they saw no more of them. 



What these elephants thought when they found a 

 track which, to them, was new and inexplicable, is, of 

 course, a matter of conjecture; but their trail revealed 

 everything that was done on this occasion, as clearly as 

 if the Hottentots had been eye-witnesses of their actions. 



Colonel Julius Barras (" India and Tiger-Hunting ") 

 entered con amore into a study of the elephant, so far as 

 its character came into play when the animal was em- 

 ployed in sport J and he did what no other gentleman, 



