ii8 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



When commanded by man, the elephant will tear a criminal 

 limb from limb, or crush him to death with his knees, or go out 

 to battle holding a sword in his trunk. He will, when told 

 to do so, attack his kind with fury and persistence; but in the 

 course of many hours, and even days, spent in watching wild 

 herds, I never yet saw a single individual show any signs of 

 impatience or ill-temper toward his fellows. 



It is safe to say that, thus far, not one half the elephant's 

 mental capabilities have been developed, or even understood. 

 It would be of great interest to determine by experiment the 

 full educational capacity of this interesting quadruped. It 

 would be equally interesting to determine the limit of its reason- 

 ing powers in appUed mechanics. An animal that can turn a 

 hand-organ at the proper speed, or ring a telephone and go 

 through the motions of listening with a receiver, can be taught 

 to push a smoothing-plane invented purposely for him; but 

 whether he would learn of himself to plane the rough surface 

 smooth, and let the smooth ones remain untouched, is an open 

 question. 



While it is generally fruitless and unsatisfactory to enter 

 the field of speculation, I can not resist the temptation to assert 

 my belief that an elephant can be taught to read written char- 

 acters, and also to express some of his own thoughts or states of 

 feeling in writing. It would be a perfectly simple matter to 

 prepare suitable appliances by which the sagacious animal could 

 hold a crayon in his trunk, and mark upon a surface adapted 

 to his convenience. Many an elephant has been taught to make 

 i-halk-marks on a blackboard. In Elian's work on "The 

 Nature of Animals," the eleventh chapter of the second book, 

 he describes in detail the wonderful performances of elephants 

 at Rome, all of which he saw. One passage is of peculiar 

 interest to us, and the following has been given as a translation: 

 " . . .1 saw them writing letters on Roman tablets with their 

 trunks, neither looking awry nor turning aside. The hand, 

 however, of the teacher was placed so as to be a guide in the 



