122 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



ing'^^^^ "'^ t'on»w«tt*ca*/o?is to the forest and Sfream IhibHsh- 



HUNTING m THE HIMALAYAS. 



Lfghts and Shadows of an Indian Forester's Life. V.* 



TN my last budget to the Fobest and Stkbam from this 

 J- region, I made a passing reference to the Indian mahout's 

 estimate of the intelligence of his charge, of which he is at 

 same time both servant and master; and now as I sit at 

 the door of my tent, my eye rests occasionally on a scene in 

 which my elephant appears the very type of a "bloated 

 aristocrat." The mahout has alwaj's an assistant, whose 

 duty It IS to bring the water, cnt and help load the fodder, 

 Mke the bread foi- the elephant and assist in washing him. 

 It IS this ktter operation the two are now enga<ied in. and if 

 ever eye and attitude betokened at the same time calm en- 

 .-joyment, and the pleasant consciousness that it had pleased 

 God to call him to that condition of life in which he was, 

 provided M'ith two more or less intelligent beings to cater for 

 his necessities and comfort, my elephant's eye and attitude 

 certainly bespeak it, as he lies on his side with outstretched 

 legs, while the subordinate empties mussickf after mussick 

 of ice cold water over him, and the mahout himself goes 

 over the whole sm-face with a scrubbing brush, talking to 

 the elephant as he docs so, asking him 'if he were ever as 

 well served before, and calmly upbraiding liim for the un- 

 grateful return he frequently makes for the zealous and con- 

 scientious services rendered him. The elephant listens, flaps 

 his upper e.nr lazily, and winks slyly, showing that he evi- 

 dently understands the general drift of the discourse; 

 but he makes no retort. At length the mahout tells him 

 that his skin has been thoroughly cleaned on that side, and 

 suggests a turn over. The elephant lies still and flaps his 

 ear. "What's the matter?"' asks the mahout. "Why don't 

 you tui-n over?" Again the elephant flaps his ear. The 

 mahout lifts the ponderous lobe, sees a little dirt and scurf in 

 one of the folds, and attacks it with his brush, calling for 



you turn over now and let us finish the other side, or do you 

 want to keep us here all day, and give us no time to bake 

 your bread before dark?" The elephant gives a little grunt, 

 comes to a sitting posture, and then rolls quietly over on the 

 other side, and the washing is brought to a close. This 

 finished he is led off to his fig tree, to which he is securely 

 hobbled, and then he begins on his fodder. The flies annoy 

 him, but his tail and ears are kept in constant motion, and 

 every now and then the trunk sweeps over parts not ac- 

 cessible by those two organs. The edge of his appetite taken 

 ofl:', and the flies being still troublesome, he casts his eye .up- 

 ward, selects a suitable shoot about six feet long, pulls it 

 down, and setting one foot upon the crown or terminal tuft 

 of leaves, he curls his trunk round it close to the crown, and 

 drawing the stick through, strips it of all its side leaves. He 

 has now a suitable whisk, and taking it at the butt end with 

 the lips of his trunk he proceeds to whisk himself systematic- 

 ally, sometimes holding it poised, and coming down sud- 

 denly on a fly whenever and wherever it alights. This is 

 not instinct, it is a clear instance, not merely of adoption, 

 but of adaptation of means to an end and is consequently an 

 evidence of reason. 



Although low in degree, I hold that the elephant is un- 

 questionably gifted with reasoning powers which would 

 admit of considerable development if the beasts could only 

 be bred in captivity. I have seen a young elephant born in 

 captivity, and the tricks which he had been taught when a 

 mere calf under two hundred pounds' weight were really 

 marvellous; but he was in the hands of the priests, and I am 

 afraid his moral culture was receiving but little attention. 

 His animal spirits were exuberant, and his playfulness 

 equal to that of a puppy dog's, without the tendency to rend 

 and tear. 



With such veiy rare exceptions, all our elephants are, cap- 

 tured full-grown with tlie aid of tame elephants, which enter 

 heartily into the spirit of the thing, and this fact renders still 

 more remarkable their intelligent comprehension of what is 

 required of them. 



In their wild state they inove in large herds ; there are sev- 

 eral of them in these forests, and every measure of forest 

 conservancy ap])ears to attract their attention. 1 do not 

 doubt for a moment that they hold councils and exchange 

 their views on the subject. At the other end of my division 

 is a considerable young sal forest, which I placed under fire 

 conservancy last year, cutting flj'e lines through the whole 

 area at a mile apart. These Sewaliks ai-e covered with an 

 enormous debris of drift gravel and boulders, and appear to 

 be the old sea bottom through which the Himalayas thrust 

 tlieir towering peaks in the long ago; and to prevent travelers 

 wandering oil the designated roads and dropping the coals 

 from their hookas in the forest, I used the boulders to inclose 

 two of the lire lines for roadways through the forest, build- 

 ing a dry wale on either side about three feet high. The 

 lierd of elephantB roaming over this region came and inves- 

 tigated the obstacle, and having satisfied themselves that it 

 could be touched with impunity, set to work removing the 

 stones and made a considerable breach in the walls. 



In their wild state the elephants are very harmless and 

 free from any further disposition to mischief than an 

 occasional raid upon a field of sugar cane; but far from 

 being phlegmatic, as their ponderous form might lead one to 

 suppose them ; they are in a high degree nervous and excita- 

 ble. Some of them are endowed with fearless courage, and 

 regardless of a tiger's claws will seize and dash him to their 

 feet, then kneel on him, either crushing the life out of him 

 or transfixing him with their tusks. Others again are arrant 

 cowards, and will rush roaring from the attack of a wounded 

 buifalo, or even a suckling pig. But bold or timid, they 

 become excited beyond all self control in the presence of 

 snarling or yelling caniivora. A friend of mine, Capt. H. — 

 long since passed over to the great majority — described to 

 me a terrilile scene to whiwh he was witness some years ago 

 in Assam. The wife of his dog keeper was at the stream 

 washing one of his young dogs, which yelled and whined 

 during the operation, and while thus engaged his mahout 

 came down to the stream with the elephant to water him. 

 The elephant was verynervou.s and excitable, and the 



* See FoKEST and Stbbam, Vol. XXIII , pp. 22, 42, 62, 143. 



t A bullock's fekin tanned and sewn up for a water vessel. Stout 

 leather straps passing from the hind to the forelegs, enable the 

 Aquarius to carry the load over his shoulders, the straps passing 

 across his chest. 



mahout called out to the woman to leave the dog and run or 

 the elephant would kill her. The woman, still holding the 

 dog, looked up and laughed, and the next moment the pon- 

 derous beast rushed on her, seized her by one leg, and plant- 

 ing one foot with crushing weight on her chest,"literally tore 

 her in two. 



In the independent native states criminals are commonly 

 chained to the elephant's legs, and the beast, excited by the 

 unwonted load, turns and pounds the victim to a jelly. 

 8ome of these native chiefs, too, keep distinctly vicious ele- 

 phants, which delight in cruelty, and criminals or others, 

 who have rendered themselves obnoxious to the ruler, are 

 handed over to the tender mercies of the "rogue" to make 

 sport with. Sometimes one of these vicious brutes breaks 

 loose and runs amuck, killing every man he can lay hold of, 

 and can only be stayed in his course by a more powerful 

 elephant, or a couple of trusty beasts coming to the rescue, 

 beating him to his knees, and holding him down while the 

 chains are put on him. 



The jungles too have their "rogues." of which terrible 

 tales are told by the villagers far and wide. The "rogue" is 

 a solitary elephant, and is commonly supposed to have been 

 chief of the herd and to have lost his supremacy when ad- 

 vancing years brought decaying vigor. This is probably 

 sometimes the case, and the vanquished leader, rendered sul- 

 len by defeat, betakes himself to a hfe of solitude; but all 

 solitary elephants are not "rogues." I have frequently met 

 solitary elephants, which moved out of my way or eyed me 

 with indifference. But the ' 'rogue" elephant soon makes his 

 presence felt. He appears to be" irresistibly impelled to acts 

 of cruelty, and might be supposed to bemad but for the 

 cunning he displays. I am inchned to believe that the rogue 

 elephant is somewhat akin to the "dangerous lunatic," and 

 that on the first disj.vlay of the symptoms the herd unites and 

 drives him out. I remember one which some few years ago 

 infested another section of the Sewaliks, through which the 

 government highway ran, and which used to lie in hiding 

 for solitary travelers on whom he would pounce, sometimes 

 trampling them to jelly, at others seizing and carrying them 

 in his trunk to a forked tree, the two branches of which 

 were nearly parallel, and not more than a foot apart at six 

 feet above the junction. Wed.ging his victims into this fork 

 with a force that rendered extrication hopeless, he would 

 leave them there. At night, too, he would sometimes go for 

 a hut, batter it down, and trampling the ruins under foot, 

 display an almost fiendish delight when he found he had 

 secured the inmates. On one occasion a man escaped from 

 the hut, but the elephant marked him down in a sugar-cane 

 field, laid the whole crop level with the ground, and at length 

 found that man in a canal ditch, dragged him out and 

 trampled him to death. His ravages created such a panic 

 that the whole district was deserted, until at length with the 

 aid of a large troop of tame elephants he was driven into a 

 pit and despatched. In cruelty of disposition he was abso- 

 lutely human 



But a rogue elephant is no more typical of the species than 

 the dangerous lunatic is typical of humanity. No animal is 

 more readily domesticated than the elephant, no other ani- 

 mal displays a readier disposition than he to render himself 

 useful to his conqueror, and no other animal nearly approxi- 

 mates him in intelligent conception of what is required of 

 him. Talk about man having descended from the simians— 

 the elephant is as superior to the simians in brain power as 

 man is superior to him. In common with the simians, too, 

 he has some anatomical relations to man not existing in other 

 animals; he goes down forward on his knees like a man, in- 

 stead of backward on his hocks like other beasts. The 

 female, too, has the mammse on the breast instead of on the 

 abdomen, and the brain is proportionately larger than in any 

 other animal. "I could never, said a humorous friend of 

 mine, one day, in argument with a rabid Darwinian, "I 

 could never believe that man descended from the monkeys, 

 but that a man might descend from an elephant I could eas- 

 ily believe." "Absurd," said the other angrily, "look at the 

 dissimilarity of structure — nature never advances pe7' saUem 

 — by a leap." "Oh, yes, but there are exceptions to every 

 rule," said the wag, "in the case I am thinking of a man did 

 actually descend from an elephant ^Jf??- saKetn hj a cross with 

 a tiger." 



l have frequently when traveling through the jungles come 

 to a dense impassable belt of young timber, which the ele- 

 phant in his wild state would make a detour to avoid, but 

 the elephant in his wild state presumably thinks less of the 

 value of time than a man who is four miles from home and 

 already late for breakfast ; and the man claiming the mastery 

 the elephant is instructed to clear a way through, "Lugget," 

 says the mahout. The elephant emits a groan in a tone of 

 remonstrance, implying, as clearly as may be, that the order 

 is impracticable. "Lugget!" screams the mahout in deter- 

 mined tones. Another groan of angry remonstrance from 

 the elephant, and an attempt to back out. ' 'Lugget, " persists 

 the mahout, driving his iron prod down into the raw long 

 ago established at the back of the beast's head, as the best 

 channel of conveying orders to his comprehension, and the 

 elephant yielding the point, hij^s hold of the young .stems 

 right and left and bends them to the ground; perhaps fhey 

 are too tough to break, the elphant bends them before him 

 in the direction he is moving, and takes good care that 

 they do not fly up against him as the ]M'essure is removed. 

 On" such flexible stems he plants his feet firmly down, 

 and walking along them, never lifts his forefoot until the 

 hindf oot is ready to take its place. Perhaps there is a lateral 

 branch overhead, high enough for him to pass under, but not 

 high enough to clear the howdah. If it is a small branch it 

 is broken down cheerfully at the word of command, but if 

 a large branch taking his whole strength, he will frequently 

 remonstrate and seek to give it up after the first attempt, 

 but finding no escape, he will try to raise the snoot of his 

 trunk to the branch, coil his trunk tightly round, and then 

 bringing his whole strength to bear, will generally succeed 

 in breaking it down if it is not more than about ten inches 

 diameter of hard wood. On coming to a bridge he has 

 never crossed before, he cannot be driven to advance a step 

 beyond what he has proved. If he comes to an unsound 

 part he relies on proving it with his trunk and one foot,while 

 the other three feet are safely ijlanted. But he is terribly 

 puzzled by a bridge of boats, which at the outset he mis- 

 trusts very much. I have ridden an elephant half way 

 across such a bridge much against her own will and judg- 

 ment, but at that stage her heart misgave her, and dropping 

 cautiously on the bridge she once more worked her way 

 backward, not rashly like a frightened horse, but cautiously 

 as if in the conviction that her life depended on coolness and 

 self-possession. She has now a more correct appreciation of 

 the sustaining power of a bridge of boats and frequently 

 crosses them, even with less precaution than she adopts for 

 an ordinary t)ridge. She has learned that a bridge of boats 



is not to be tested by the experience derived from other 

 structures. 



In this part of India elephants are employed by Europeans 

 only for hunting, for their suitability to jungle travel and 

 sometimes as beasts of hnrthen for the coiniuissariat depart- 

 ment; but in Burmah om- department is using them for 

 stacking large timber in the depots, a work in which ttey 

 render useful and intelligent service. Two of them will lift 

 a log to its place on the stack, and if the ends are not square 

 one of them will place his forehead against the protruding 

 end and push it into place. 



It is not a Uttle remarkable that an animal so readily 

 domesticated refuses to breed under domestication, but this 

 is unhappily the case. Whether they abstain on principle, 

 preferring race extinction to the perpetuation of race servi- 

 tude; or whether it is due to shyness or dehcacy, or to a 

 settled _ melancholy which reacts on their secretions, it is 

 impossible to decide, but the hard fact remains that ele- 

 phants never breed m confinement. Elephants once domes- 

 ticated have experimentally been let loose in large forest in- 

 closures and recaptured with their calves, but practically 

 the attempt to breed them in confinement is an utter failm-e. 

 As a consequence the supply of fresh captives decreases with 

 the demand and the race is fast tending lo extinction in 

 India. Their general price is from $200 lo S500 of your 

 money, but as they become scarcer prices will probably 

 range so high that they will pass almost exclusively into the 

 hands of native rajahs who regard them as indispensable to 

 the maintenance of their dignity. Elephants are long lived, 

 there are several vigorous animals known to have been thirty 

 to forty years in domestication, and the general opinion is 

 that they are about as long lived as humanity, sometimes at- 

 taining to a hundred years. Happily they are no longer 

 slaughtered for their ivory; the laws of British India render 

 it penal to kill any but a rogue elephant; and for .some years 

 past none have been captured iu the Sewaliks. The herds 

 are neither numerous nor large, and it has been determined 

 to leave them alone a few years before making another raid 

 on them. a. 



Camp Httrdwar, Sewalik Range, India. 



address all comimmicaUom to the Forest and Hh-eam PuUMi- 

 iiuj Co, 



INCOMING AUTUMN AT CENTRAL PARK. 



THE large and valuable group of palms belonging to the es 

 tablishment, kept closely in care during the .summer at 

 Mt. St. Yincent, is iu fine condition out of doors, where it will 

 remain for some weeks longer. This collection includes 

 specimens of somewhat rare varieties, as the Samia horrida 

 and the Cycas circinalis, which is one of the kinds of sago 

 palm, and less common than the Cijms rerQluUo. 



In addition here at present as prominent specimens are the 

 Sakia spkmleiu, with scarlet plume, the Eyrthrina. ehristi- 

 rjalU or coral plant, the LoheUa cardeaalis, of deep scarlet with 

 ashy petals, the Vinca romr of the periwinkle family, the 

 Thurihergia alata covering the rocks in matted vines and 

 flowering in unmixed white, pale yellow or deep orange, the 

 foliage plants making a splendid show of color tlirough the 

 grounds, while a fine lot of tea roses enchant beholders; some 

 bananas are at the fruit stage, a lofty cactus displays a soli- 

 tary flower, and the Tritonia vvtiria, familiarly known as red 

 hot poker, carries erect its flame-like red and orange spikes 

 which continue until winter, and which maj^ be viewed as 

 well at the Arsenal, where a specimen grows on the east side 

 of the building. 



The Sopfiorajaponica flowering on Japanese Point south- 

 ward from the large lake, represents the highest degree of 

 beauty in its species. Other specimens are in the Ramble 

 and also near the greenhouses. This native of China and 

 Japan, a hardy and deciduous tree growing from forty to 

 fifty feet in height, is indeed very highly ornamental. Its 

 flowering, which commenced last month, continues through 

 September. The tree is well covered with large loose terminal 

 panicles of small cream-colored or greenish-white flowers 

 borne on compound spikes. The foliage of pinnate leaves 

 with eleven or thirteen oblong-ovate acute, smooth, shining 

 leaflets is also very beautiful, and neither drooping nor turn- 

 ing pale in the most unfavorable seasons. The fruit of this 

 species is employed to dye a fine yellow. If Loudon was 

 informed correctly the flower produces a yellow of so 

 superior a hue that it is reserved exclusively for dyeing stuffs 

 to be worn by members of the, royal family. 



A more rare production here is the fruit of the ginkgo tree 

 growing west of the Terrace, not far from the statute of the Fal- 

 coner. Near the greenhouses there is another specimen of the 

 tree, liut without fmit. It is otherwise called the maiden haii'- 

 leaved salisburia, the somewhat triangalar, fan-shaped, 

 smooth and shinning leaves cloven half way down through 

 the center, showing a formation of fine, liair-like, parallel 

 ribs throughout. The catkins borne by the tree in spring- 

 were of a yellowish color. The fruit is a globular or ovate 

 drupe about an inch in diameter. It contains a white nut 

 with flavor compared to that of the almond. According to 

 recent accounts from Japan it is prepared for food in that 

 country by cooking. Both in China and Japan the tree is 

 chiefly' grown for its fruit, which also is exposed for sale in 

 some quantity in Chinese markets. The fruit of the Poie- 

 Ionia imperioMa, found near the Mineral Springs, has been 

 mistaken within a few days past for that of the ginkgo. 

 The leaves of the two trees are, however, quite dissimilar. 



At present the great soft panicles of a magnificent variety of 

 hydrangea — PanicuWn grandiftora — are conspicuous, droop- 

 ing heavily on their stalks, ' 'as big as a peck measure," in mOk 

 white or tinted with rose or salmon. Even these are 

 wrenched away, purloined by the base born. Splendid 

 groups of these flowers are on the Terrace, and others appear 

 in less open places with spikes of terminal panicles of 

 flowers thickly massed and bent far toward the greensward 

 by their own weight. 



The brilliant lantanas flowering iu theu vaneties from 

 July until checked by frost are less numerously present. 

 When cultivated in the form of a diminutive tree and dis- 

 playing flowers of rose and purple or of orange and scarlet, 

 the species furnishes a rich contribution of color to an 

 autumn arrangement. 



Children visiting the Park nevei' cease to be interested in 

 the long, swinging seed-pods of the catalpa tree, a native of 

 our country, which flowers in July and August, showing 

 corollas of white speckled with yellow and purple. The 

 pods are now well grown, and seen dangling their remark- 



