APPENDIX 367 



Another very tender point in tie elephant is the back. A highly 

 arched back is very liable to get galled ; and such sores, when fairly 

 established, are exceedingly obstinate. Such a back will almost 

 always show traces of old sores about the ridge, and frequently they 

 are only healed over on the surface, leaving deep sinuses below ready 

 to break out on the slightest pressure. Such a back should be avoided 

 and a flat back, showing as nearly as possible a straight line from the 

 withers to the croup, should be selected. Besides its immunity from 

 gaUing, such a back always carries a load, or the howdah, well and 

 steadily. 



The above are almost all the external points to which the attention 

 of the purchaser requires to be directed. Old strains will sometimes 

 afiect the paces, but this can be seen at once. I have alluded, in the 

 text, to the points of build and carriage that should be looked to in 

 choosing an elephant. There is no critical test of the animal's age. 

 The ears are always a good deal spHt and frayed at the edges in an 

 old animal; but so they sometimes are also in young ones. The 

 general appearance wiU, however, indicate the age sufficiently well 

 for practical purposes. The full size and development is attained 

 at from thirty-five to forty years ; and from that age till about sixty, 

 the elephant is in the prime of life. It is desirable to buy an elephant 

 of fuU age if required for shooting, young animals being nearly always 

 timid and unenduring. A very old, or " aged," elephant will be easily 

 recognised by the loose, wrinkly state of the skin, deep hollows above 

 the eyes, and very deeply cracked ears. I do not think that the 

 number of concentric rings in the ivory of the tusk is a rehable criterion, 

 though the natives talk a good deal about it. 



At the great Sonpur fair, mentioned in the text, which is the 

 principal market for elephants, the elephants ofiered for sale are 

 usually the property either of landowners from the districts of 

 Bengal, or of Mahomedan dealers who move about between the 

 places where they are captured and the chief markets and native 

 courts. The former are much the safest to purchase, having generally 

 been purchased young by the landowner, and brought up among his 

 own people at his farm, with plentiful food and good treatment. It 

 is quite a part of their business this buying of youngsters, which they 

 prefer for their own riding, keeping them till of full size, and selling 

 them at a good round profit. The dealer's strings, on the other hand, 

 are too often made up of the halt and the blind. There is no end to 

 their tricks. A dangerous man-killer is reduced to temporary harm- 

 lessness by a daily piU of opium and hemp. Kandi sores are plugged, 

 and Sajhan cracks " paid " with tow. Sore backs are surface -healed ; 

 and the animals are so bedizened with paint, and so fattened up with 

 artificial feeding, that it is hard to tell what any one of them would 

 look like if " stripped to the bones." Then the space is so confined, 

 and the crowd so great, that very little " trotting out " is possible ; 

 so that altogether buying elephants at such fairs is anything but plain 

 sailing. 



The usual food of elephants in Upper and Central India consists 



