884 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
had reached him, that such an animal commanded the highest 
prices. Now the tables are so entirely turned, that we never 
hear of any one being carried off by these animals, whether 
native or not, except in the remote interior of the forests of 
Bengal and Africa, into which the heavy and formidable rifle 
of the British sportsman has not yet carried its ounce-ball 
terrors. While hunting on elephants has become a sport, 
attended with so little danger, that even the placid nerves 
of a clerk from Threadneedle street may now venture to 
partake of the indulgence, fortified with a little cotton stuffed 
in his ears to drown the roars of the brute, and a little sal 
volatile to stay his spirits when the blood begins to flow. 
The dreaded tiger now skulks in caves and deepest jungles, 
until frightened forth by the maddening and incessant play 
of rockets, grenades, and every other species of torturing 
fire-works. While the lordly lion waits behind the bush for 
the assault of his foes, and is not known to charge, even 
until several times wounded. In yielding to the mastery 
mn has thus established, these animals have lost nothing 
of their original characteristics, except so far as their rela- 
tions to him are concerned—and in this the difference is 
rither, as we have before remarked, to man the mechanical 
intelligence, than to man the animal. 
Nor are these gradual ameliorations of temper and habits, 
so far as mankind are concerned, confined to quadrupeds 
alone—birds, and all other creatures, partake of them, in 
degrees proportioned to their intelligence. It is notorious 
how soon game birds, and the whole family of rapacious 
birds, learn to distinguish a man with a gun from a man 
without a gun, and with such sagacity will they do this, tuo, 
that we are seldom able to surprise them, by any stratagem 
of concealed weapons. 
And yet the white-headed eagle remains the white-headed 
eagle, so far as its relations to the rest of the world are 
concerned. It continues to thrash the vultures, to make 
