1^8 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



texture, so that the experts were able to tell from which dis- 

 trict they came. The evidence, in a word, appears to show 

 that the creature tends to vary ; and it is a safe presumption 

 that the forms would prove as responsive to the breeder's art 

 as those of our horses, cattle, sheep, or dogs. 



As a whole, the elephant has been almost as little associ- 

 ated with the life of our own race as the camel. Neither of 

 these creatures has ever played any considerable part in 

 European affairs. From the disappearance of the last of the 

 mammoths In the closing stages of the Glacial time until the 

 invasions of Italy by Pyrrhus and by Hannibal, elephants 

 were practically unknown in Western Europe. They have 

 never been used in peaceful occupations on that continent, 

 and have had only a trifling place in its military arts. It was 

 probably due to this separation of our eminently experimental 

 race from the realm of the elephants that no efforts have 

 been made systematically to breed them in captivity, and 

 thus to win varieties in which the form might become better 

 adapted to economic needs, and the remarkable mental 

 powers of the creature be brought to their utmost develop- 

 ment. As yet the only Europeans who have had much to do 

 with elephants are the British, who in their civil and military 

 service in India have been thrown in contact with these ani- 

 mals. Generally, however, these people have been only tem- 

 porarily domiciled in Asia, and probably on this account have 

 not become interested in the problems which this noble beast 

 presents to all those who appreciate the animal world. We 

 lack, indeed, the observations which might have been made 

 with admirable effect by British observers in India during 

 the two centuries in which that people has had to do with 

 the lands in which elephants abound. 



