116 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. in. 



although two may be in the same vicinity, there is no 

 known instance of their associating, or of a rogue being 

 seen in company with another elephant. 



They spend their nights in marauding, often about 

 the dwellings of men, destroying their plantations, 

 trampling down their gardens, and committing serious 

 ravages in rice grounds and young coco-nut plantations. 

 Hence from their closer contact with man and his dwell- 

 ings, these outcasts become disabused of many of the 

 terrors which render the ordinary elephant timid and 

 needlessly cautious ; they break through fences without 

 fear; and even in the daylight a rogue has been known 

 near Ambogammoa to watch a field of labourers at work 

 in reaping rice, and boldly to walk in amongst them, seize 

 a sheaf from the heap, and retire leisurely to the jungle. 

 By day they generally seek concealment, but are fre- 

 quently to be met with prowling about the by-roads and 

 jungle paths, where travellers are exposed to the utmost 

 risk from their savage assaults. It is probable that this 

 hostility to man is the result of the enmity engendered 

 by those measures which the natives, who have a con- 

 stant dread of their visits, adopt for the protection of 

 their growing crops. In some districts, especially in the 

 low country of Badulla, the villagers occasionally enclose 

 their cottages with rude walls of earth and branches to 

 protect them from nightly assaults. In places infested 

 by them, the visits of European sportsmen to the vicinity 

 of their haunts are eagerly encouraged by the natives, 

 who think themselves happy in lending their services to 

 track the ordinary herds in consideration of the benefit 

 conferred on the village communities by the destruction 

 of a rogue. In 1847 one of these formidable creatures 

 frequented for some months the Eangbodde Pass on the 



