Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 9 1 



culated at ^500 per annum, when that much- 

 puffed beaft was fold to Barnum. It can eat, he 

 informs us, nine Macedonian bufhels at a meal, 

 and ere now had been known to drink fourteen 

 Macedonian meafures at once. He notes, alfo, 

 that fome are fiercer and more courageous than 

 others, a fact well known at prefent to all Indian 

 tiger-hunters, and that they pufh over palm-trees 

 with their foreheads, then walk up them and eat 

 what they defire of them. This, too, is a habit 

 confirmed by all modern travellers. His account 

 of elephant-catching comprifes in one fhort para- 

 graph the whole of the beft modern books on the 

 fubjecl:, whether Tennant or Sander fon. " The 

 chafe of elephants is on" this famion. Men mount 

 fome of the tame and courageous elephants and 

 purfue the herd. When they have come up with 

 it, they bid their own animals to beat the wild 

 ones with their trunks, until they give in through 

 faintnefs. Then the elephant-taker leaps on one 

 of them and guides it with his weapon. After 

 this it foon becomes mild and fubmiffive. When 

 the elephant-taker has mounted them, all are in 

 fubjection ; but when he has difmounted fome re- 

 main fo, while others return to a wild ftate. 

 While thefe are raging, they fetter with chains 

 their front legs, in order that they may be quiet. 

 Both fmall and great are thus captured." 1 



The firft twelve chapters of Pliny's eighth book 

 of " Natural Hiftory " contain almoft all the fads as 

 well as the fancies known to the ancients about 



1 Ar., "Hift. Anim.," ix. 33 ; vi. 17 ; viii. 25, II ; ix. 2. 



