PAST AND FUTURE OF ANIMAL LIFE 147 



of some animals would seem a superhuman task ; 

 the rhinoceros is too stupid to avoid and too ferocious 

 to fear a fatal encounter with man, and, while he is 

 unable to see, his sense of smell incites him to charge 

 indiscriminately upon single persons or upon caravans 

 of armed men who would often wish to leave him 

 unmolested. The elephant combines the qualities of 

 sagacity, destructiveness and usefulness, with an uii- 

 tractability that may end in his final extinction. For 

 unknown ages he has served the peoples of India and 

 Ceylon as a beast of carriage, of transport and of 

 unrivalled strength ; no people in modern times has 

 had the skill or patience to tame the distinct African 

 species for domestic uses, and a believer in progress 

 might hesitate to ascribe to the Indian or the African 

 Continent the war- elephants which, in the times of 

 Hannibal, supplied the African and astonished the 

 Roman legionaries. There is, however, no doubt 

 that Northern Africa in the second century B.C. could 

 boast not only elephants, but a people sufficiently 

 energetic to undertake the education of the colossal 

 beast. But the elephant has ever shown itself 

 untractable to the full discipline of domestication ; 

 he may do everything in bondage at his master's 

 bidding save propagate his kind ; and the elephants 

 in India and in Ceylon, which may be seen carrying 

 their lords in the chase or engaged in the transport 

 of timber and other heavy burdens, have all been 



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