30 



THE ELEPHANTS. 



witness quarrels or serious battles among the 

 herds. Live and let live seems to be the 

 highest law of these troops. Every individual 

 drinks, eats, bathes, and rests according to 

 its own pleasure, while keeping on good 

 terms with its neighbour. The young are 

 guarded and tended in common, are fondled 

 and caressed by all, and are suckled by the 

 females in milk. Only at the breeding season 

 do serious battles take place between the 

 males; and the rejected males, which live as 

 hermits, the so-called "rogue" elephants, 

 alone exhibit a fierce disposition, and are 

 dangerous even to man. 



The female remains pregnant for 20 or 2 1 

 months. The new-born elephant is about 

 three feet or more in height. It sucks with 

 the mouth, bending back its trunk, and is 

 able to follow the herd at the end of a few 

 hours. The young continue growing till 

 they are about 25 years old, and examples 

 are known of elephants which have lived to 

 be more than a hundred. 



The mental qualities which the elephant 

 exhibits in a wild state scarcely surpass those 

 of other social animals, and are certainly 

 inferior to those of the apes and monkeys, 

 while, on the other hand, they far excel those 

 of the generally stupid ruminants. An old 

 male leads the herd with infinite care and 

 caution. It is he who scrutinizes susjaicious 

 places, leads the marches, selects the halting- 

 places, and stations the sentinels to ensure the 

 safety of the herd while resting, bathing, or 

 feeding. The herd follows him with a blind 

 confidence, and all the members of it give 

 themselves up to their sports without fear 

 when the leader shows himself satisfied. 



It may justly be said that the higher 

 mental qualities of the elephant, which cannot 

 be called in question, have been developed 

 only after he came into contact with man, his 

 sole enemy. It is for that reason that he has 

 an unbounded fear of man, and it is on 

 account of this fear that he allows himself 

 to be easily tamed and employed as a 



domestic animal, which still has its value in 

 certain parts, but wherever civilization 

 advances must yield to the ox and horse, 

 whose services in the way of labour are much 

 greater in proportion to the food consumed. 



The African Elephant [Elcphas africanus, 

 Plate XVII.) may attain the height of 16 

 feet. It is easily distinguished by its short, 

 thickset body, supported by long and rather 

 thin legs, by its steep brow, and its enor- 

 mous flat ears in the form of nearly half- 

 moon shaped discs, which cover the neck 

 and shoulders and touch the nape of the 

 neck as well as the under surface of the 

 throat with their extremities. These enormous 

 fans are almost always in motion, and impart 

 to the animal a quite peculiar appearance 

 according to the position in which it holds 

 them. The brow appears to be less arched 

 than that of the Indian elephant, not in 

 consequence of the lower development of the 

 brain, as some recent writers assert, but 

 because the hollow spaces which we have 

 described in the frontal bone are not so much 

 puffed up. The trunk is pretty slender, 

 somewhat compressed, and has numerous 

 folds which stand out on the edges like 

 flattened scales. The tusks of the males are 

 enormous, and may attain a length of several 

 yards and a weight of no lbs. each.^ The 

 skin is roughly folded, of a dirty slate-blue 

 colour, and almost destitute of hair, which is 

 found in small quantity only on the neck, the 

 breast, and the belly. 



At the present day the African elephant, 

 which far excels the Indian in size and 

 strength, and also in wildness, is only the 

 object of unceasing and destructive pursuit, 

 carried on for the sake of the ivory, the 

 tusks. The yield of ivory and the size of 

 the tusks brought to market are gradually 



' Isolated instances of much heavier tusks are recorded. Officers 

 belonging to the Niger expedition of 1837 reported that a negro 

 chief had shown them two tusks each measuring lyi feet in circum- 

 ference at the socket and weighing more than 330 lbs., and Broderip 

 states in his Zoological Recreations that a tusk of that weight was 

 sold at Amsterdam. See Von Scherzer, Das ■wirthschaftliche Leben 

 der V'olker, p. 366, «. — Tr. 



