172 THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
occasionally met with separate from the general herd, 
indulge perhaps more frequently in these excesses than 
the community, which generally avoids as much as _ pos- 
sible the habitations of man. It has commonly been 
imagined that these stray Elephants were the younger 
and weaker males, who had been driven from the herd 
by their more powerful fellows; but the fact that they 
are usually adults of the largest size completely nega- 
tives this supposition, and proves that it is of their own 
free will that they wander thus alone. They attain their 
full growth between the ages of eighteen and twenty- 
four, and well authenticated instances have occurred in 
which they have reached the age of a hundred and thirty 
years. Indeed there is reason to believe that their life 
may be sometimes prolonged to two centuries. 
The usual mode of catching the wild Elephants for the 
purpose of domestication has been so often described that 
it would be superfluous to repeat it here. It may be suffi- 
cient to observe that a herd of them having been driven 
by the hunters into an enclosure surrounded by pali- 
sades and ditches, and provided only with a narrow pass 
by way of egress, they are there made prisoners one after 
the other, and attached to the tame elephants, which are 
employed on such occasions partly as decoys and partly 
as guards over their captive brethren. ‘The necessity of 
having recourse to this mode of supplying the wants, or 
rather of ministering to the pride, of the sovereigns of 
the East, both native and European, who alike regard 
these animals as the indispensable appendages of their 
rank, arises from the circumstance of the breed being 
very rarely propagated in captivity ; the Hindoos being 
either too ignorant or too careless to adopt the requisite 
