250 WILD ANIMALS. 



a law for the preservation of an animal so useful for the purposes 

 of labour and so indispensable in India for military operations. The 

 wise policy thus inaugurated being followed in other places, their 

 numbers ceased diminishing; but civilization and wild animals 

 cannot exist together, and the race must die off gradually as the 

 country gets opened up and settled. When this happens, it is to 

 be hoped the elephant will be found domesticated like the horse, 

 dog, or camel, thriving and multiplying under man's protection as 

 they have done. 



In a work published in Leipsio forty years ago, " Travels in 

 India," by Captain S. von Orlich, which was translated by .Mr. 

 H. E. Lloyd, we read : " In the neighbourhood of Sumalka, a 

 town not far from Delhi, lying amongst ancient and beautiful 

 tamarind-trees, fig-trees, and acacias, is the encampment of one 

 hundred and twenty elephants. To this place I frequently and 

 gladly go for the purpose of watching the sagacious beasts. By 

 reason of the persecution it has endured from man, either merely 

 for the pleasure of the chase or that when tamed it might increase 

 the splendour of state, or serve as a beast of burden, and render 

 assistance in battle, the elephant has nearly disappeared from 

 the interior of India, and is found wild only in the less elevated 

 portion of the Himalayan chain ; namely, in the forest of Dshemna, 

 Nepaul, some part of Ghauts, Tarvai, the Kingdom of Ava, and 

 Ceylon. On the Upper Indus, near Attoch, where Alexander the 

 Great had his first elephant-hunt, in the Punjab, and on the banks 

 of the Jumna, not far from Kalpy, where the Emperor Baber was 

 annually accustomed to enjoy the chase and capture many of 

 these animals, there is not now a trace of this noble animal to be 

 found." 



Thanks, however, to the protection now given these noble crea- 

 tures by the Indian and Ceylon Governments throughout those 

 parts of the world over which they exercise jurisdiction, the Asiatic 

 elephants seem to be in no immediate danger of extermination. 

 Mr. Sanderson assured the public in a paper he read before the 

 Society of Arts in March, 1884, that the Madras Presidency, with- 

 drawing the reward previously given for the destruction of the 

 animal, "and the representations of humane officials having further 



