92 Gleanings from the 



elephants, folk-lore and fcience not yet being 

 feparated in the cafe of natural productions. 

 Certain tribes of Africa fubfifted by hunting 

 elephants, he tells us, and the city Ptolemais was 

 built by Philadelphus for the fake of enabling him 

 to hunt elephants. 1 Certain of thefe African 

 elephants are faid to aflemble by fours and fives in 

 the maritime diftricts of Ethiopia, and having 

 interlaced their legs and trunks, with erect heads 

 and ears, to commit themfelves to the waves, by 

 which they are floated over to the finer pafturage 

 of Arabia. As for the Indian elephants, life is 

 made a burden to them by the huge ferpents 

 which wrap their coils round them. The 

 elephants, however, undo thefe coils by their 

 trunks, whereupon the ferpents faften round them 

 by the tail, and thrufting their heads into the 

 elephant's noftrils, ftop their breath, and fting 

 them internally to death. Another account tells 

 how the ferpents lie in wait in the water where 

 elephants come to drink, and then, feizing their 

 trunks, fting them in the ear, the only part which 

 they cannot defend by their trunks. The Tro- 

 glodytes, too, lie in wait up trees till the laft of. 

 the herd is parting underneath. Upon this they 

 drop, and feizing its tail with the left hand, ham- 

 ftring it with a marp weapon in their right. A 

 fimilar mode of ftealing on elephants and ham- 

 ftringing them is ftill purfued in the Eaft. Their 

 battles with Pyrrhus mowed the Romans that an 

 elephant's trunk could eafily be cut off; and the 

 1 " Nat. Hift.," vi. 34. 



