Chap. II.] THE ELEPHANT. 
87 
abling it to swing the hind feet forward close to the 
ground, assists it to toss the body alternately from foot 
to foot, till deprived of life. 1 
A sportsman who had partially undergone this opera- 
tion, having been seized by a wounded elephant but 
rescued from its fury, described to me his sufferings as 
he was thus flung back and forward between the hind 
and fore feet of the animal, which ineffectually at-^ 
tempted to trample him at each concussion, and aban- 
doned him without inflicting serious injury. 
Knox, in describing the execution of criminals by the 
state elephants of the former kings of Kandy, says, "they 
will run their teeth (tusks) through the body, and then tear 
it in pieces and throw it limb from limb ; " but a Kandyan 
chief, who was witness to such scenes, has assured 
me that the elephant never once applied its tusks, 
but, placing its foot on the prostrate victim, plucked 
off his limbs in succession by a sudden movement of 
the trunk. If the tusks were designed to be employed 
offensively, some alertness would naturally be exhibited 
in using them ; but in numerous instances where sports- 
men have fallen into the power of a wounded elephant, 
they have escaped through the failure of the enraged 
animal to strike them with its tusks, even when stretched 
upon the ground. 2 
1 In the Third Book of Macca- (iri/xtyeiv els aZt]v iv yovatri kolL iroal 
bees, which is not printed in our frypiuv rjKKTfxivovs. 3 Mac. v. 42). 
Apocrypha, hut appears in the se- ^Elian makes the remark, that 
ries in the Greek Septuagint, the elephants on such occasions use 
author, in describing the persecu- their knees as well as their feet to 
tion of the Jews by Ptolemy Phi- crush their victims. — Hist Anim. 
lopater, B.C. 210, states that the yih. 10. 
Icing swore vehemently that he 2 The Hastisilpe, a Singhalese 
would send them into the other work which treats of the " Science 
world, "foully trampled to death of Elephants," enumerates amongst 
by the knees and feet of elephants" those which it is not desirable to 
G i 
