APPENDIX. 453 



slight film over the eye ; for it is easily removed when attended to in time. 

 But its presence would of course lessen the value the animal would otherwise 

 bear. 



Another very tender point in the elephant is the back. A highly-arched 

 back is very liable to get galled ; and such sores, when fairly established, are 

 exceedingly obstinate. Such a back will almost always show traces of old sores 

 about the ridge, and frequently they are only healed over on the surface, 

 leaving deep sinuses below ready to break out on the slightest pressure. Such 

 a back should be avoided, and a flat back, showing as nearly as possible a 

 straight line from the withers to the croup, should be selected. Besides its 

 immunity from galling, such a back always carries a load, or the howdah, well 

 and steadily. 



The above are almost all the external points to which the attention of the 

 purchaser requires to be directed. Old strains will sometimes affect the paces, 

 but this can be seen at once. I have alluded, in the text, to the points of build 

 and carriage that should be looked to in choosing an elephant. There is no 

 critical test of the animal's age. The ears are always a good deal split and 

 frayed at the edges in an old animal ; but so they sometimes are also in young 

 ones. The general appearance will, however, indicate the age sufficiently well 

 for practical purposes. The full size and development is attained at from thirty- 

 five to forty years, and from that age till about sixty, the elephant is in the prime 

 of life. It is desirable to buy an elephant of full age if required for shooting, 

 young animals being nearly always timid and unenduring. A very old, or 

 "aged" elephant will be easily recognized by the loose, wrinkly state of tho 

 skin, deep hollows above the eyes, and very deeply-cracked ears. I do not 

 think that the number of concentric rings in the ivory of the tusk is a reliable 

 criterion, though the natives talk a good deal about it. 



At the great Sonpiir fair, mentioned in the text, which is the principal 

 market for elephants, the animals offered for sale are usually the property 

 either of landowners from the districts of Bengal, or of Mahomedan dealers 

 who move about between the places where they are captured and the chief 

 markets and native courts. The former are much the safest to purchase, 

 having generally been purchased young by the landowner, and brought up 

 among his own people at his farm, with plentiful food and good treatment. It 

 is quite a part of their business this buying of youngsters, which they prefer 

 for their own riding, keeping them till of full size, and selling them at a 

 good round profit. The dealer's strings, on the other hand, are too often made 

 up of the halt and the blind. There is no end to their tricks. A dangerous 

 man-killer is reduced to temporary harmlessness by a daily pill of opium and 

 hemp. Kandi sores are plugged, and Sajhan cracks " paid " with tow. Sore 

 backs are surface-healed ; and the animals are so bedizened with paint, and so 

 fattened up with artificial feeding, that it is hard to tell what any one of them 

 would look like if " stripped to the bones." Then the space is so confined, and 

 the crowd so great, that very little " trotting out " is possible; so that alto- 

 gether buying elephants at such fairs is anything but plain sailing. 



The usual food of elephants in Upper and Central India consists of cakes of 



