492 



PACHYDEEMATA. 



remember kindness as well as harshness. Elephants usually live 

 together in herds, consisting of from forty to a hundred individuals. 

 The oldest marches at the head of the troop, and the next in age 

 watches the rear. They are easily tamed when taken young, and 

 are employed as beasts of burden. They carry about two thousand 

 pounds weight, and will travel without being very much fatigued, 

 thirty or forty miles a day. These animals swim well : they live to 

 the age of nearly two hundred years. Conscious of their own 

 massive strength, they feared no enemies, till the aggressions of 



FlG. 419. AF1UCAN ELEPHANTS. 



man taught them his superiority. Inoffensive and peaceful, they 

 rarely use their gigantic powers of injury : but when irritated, they 

 often exhibit a furious and revengeful ferocity. Heavy and mas- 

 sive in their structure, their pillar-like limbs seem ill calculated for 

 speed, yet their " pace/' when they have fairly commenced it, from 

 the length of their stride, and the great propelling weight of their 

 bodies, is for a time very rapid, and bears before it all ordinary 

 obstacles, clearing a way through the thickest and most matted 

 underwood. 



Two species of Elephants are known in existing 

 nature. 



The Indian Elephant (Elephas Indicus) has an ob- 

 long head, a concave forehead, ears of middling size, 



