ELEPHANTS IN SERVICE 
More earthly and historic are the voluminous accounts 
extant of the employment of elephants throughout Asia in 
the past, when they were the most powerful war engines of 
the Orient, making irresistible the armies of Persia, Assyria, 
Babylon, Egypt, and even of Greece and Rome, in their suc- 
cessive adventures toward conquest; and this aspect of their 
history and service, given with a wealth of curious details by 
Broderip* and by Watkins,’ may be recommended to the 
reader fond of antique lore. In this martial record the African 
elephant has a large share, for 2500 years ago it, too, was 
subjugated by the people south of the Mediterranean, and 
those taken across the Alps by Hannibal were a natural con- 
tingent of an African army. Long before that, when Ptolemy 
had marched his hosts of Greeks into the Nile Valley, his 
Indian elephant cavalry had met Sudanese war elephants on 
the side of the Egyptians, and had worsted them. 
The Indian elephant of to-day, while roaming in free herds 
through its native jungles, is nevertheless practically a subject 
animal, for now the British Indian rulers, and only to a less 
extent the allied governments of Burma and Siam, know the 
position and numbers of all the herds, and preserve them from 
wanton destruction by strictly enforced laws. This is done 
in order that the supply shall not be wasted, for the elephant 
so rarely produces young in captivity that practically its in- 
crease cannot be counted upon at all. Hence the recruits 
needed to meet the demand for private ownership of riding 
and hunting animals, or to sustain the dignity of native courts, 
in addition to those required for governmental service, Capture of 
must be captured from wild stock. This is done Flephants. 
usually by surrounding a band in the forest and driving 
it into a prepared pen or “‘keddah,”’ —a corral of palisades 
of vast strength, — where tamed elephants, under control of 
their mahouts, partly force and partly persuade the frightened 
and furious strangers to submit to enslavement. It is aston- 
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