ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 285 



to flare up angrily and run to butt at the first person in his 

 way, when such was the force of the impact that if taken by 

 surprise the person was pretty sure to be bowled over. I 

 was many a time, sometimes in play, sometimes not ; but 

 as he grew older that phase passed away, and the un- 

 reasonableness of babyhood was succeeded by an affection 

 that did not depend on needs alone, and the gentleness, so 

 characteristic of the grown elephant, dawned through his 

 roughest gambols. 



It was very pretty to mark that instinctive self-control 

 growing with his growth, exactly in the same way as one 

 sees it do in puppy dom. Every pup alike, patrician or 

 plebeian, apart from gnawing at anything hard to help 

 itself on in its teething, tears and bites ferociously at the 

 patient mother, or the hands that minister to its wants, all 

 in frolic ; later he merely mumbles, till, as an adult dog, 

 he will take your hand in his mouth without your feeling 

 the touch of a tooth. He knows now that he could hurt, 

 and he wouldn't do so for the world. 



We kept ' Bux ' for several years, and then he went to live 

 with the other elephants, eventually being made over to the 

 Government with a view to his earning his living some day, 

 only on the condition that he should always be retained in 

 F.'s district, wherever that might be Not till he should be 

 fifteen years of age would any work be required of him, 

 beyond, perhaps, the fetching of a few boughs, etc., daily 

 for his sustenance during the night. 



