INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 83 



to within about ten yards of the poor camel, but not 

 another step nearer would he move. It was too late, 

 however. Only the poor brute's head and neck were 

 visible, and in spite of every effort we were obliged 

 to abandon him to an untimely and yet a kindly fate, 

 which spared him many an after ache and pain and 

 much cruelty. 



That this elephant knew the footing to be unsafe 

 and dangerous he clearly showed by refusing to be 

 forced, and by doggedly feeling his own way, as well as 

 by expressing an anxiety amounting almost to timidity, 

 which demonstrates, I consider, a high form of intelli- 

 gence. For, knowing the existence of danger ahead by 

 seeing the camel's predicament, although several men 

 were walking between him and that animal without 

 any signs of the ground giving way, an instinctive feel- 

 ing, backed up by reason, that it would not bear his 

 weight, but sink with him, must have actuated him to 

 behave as he did. And that he was acting on no mere 

 whim, or from stubbornness, obstinacy, or bad temper 

 on the contrary, that he was only too anxious to do 

 what was required of him, provided it did not endanger 

 or imperil his own life his finally moving forward in one 

 direction, without an application of force or persuasion, 

 to a spot from which we could act, indicated plainly 

 enough. Elephants, however, I look upon, with the ex- 

 ception of the dog, as the most intelligent animals in exist- 

 ence. Burton, in his ' Nile Basin,' says that not only 

 might elephants be made useful to man, but that they 

 appear to possess an instinct which is quite a match for 

 the reason not only of the natives of Africa, but of some 

 others of the bipeds who visit its inhospitable shores. If, 



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