Chap. VI.] 



THE ELEPHANT. 



197 



in to loose the ropes that bound him, from the tree, and 

 two tame elephants being harnessed to the dead body, it 

 was dragged to a distance without the corral. 



When every wild elephant had been noosed and tied 

 up, the scene presented was truly oriental. From one to 

 two thousand natives, many of them in gaudy dresses and 

 armed with spears, crowded about the enclosures. Their 



speed with which they hurry to it 

 from all directions ; often from dis- 

 tances as extraordinary, proportion- 

 ably, as those traversed by the eye 

 of the vulture. In the instance of 

 the dying elephant referred to 

 above, life was barely extinct when 

 the flies, of which not one was 

 visible but a moment before, arrived 

 in clouds and blackened the body 

 by their multitude ; scarcely an 

 instant was allowed to elapse for 

 the commencement of decompo- 

 sition; no odour of putrefaction 

 could be discerned by us who stood 

 close by ; yet some peculiar smell 

 of mortality, simultaneously with 

 parting breath, must have sum- 

 moned them to the feast. Ants 

 exhibit an instinct equally sur- 

 prising. I have sometimes covered 

 up a particle of refined sugar with 

 paper on the centre of a polished 

 table ; and counted the number of 

 minutes which would elapse before 

 it was fastened on by the small 

 black ants of Ceylon, and a line 

 formed to lower it safely to the 

 floor. Here was a substance which, 

 to our apprehension at least, is 

 altogether inodorous, and yet the 

 quick sense of smell must have 

 been the only conductor of the 

 ants. It has been observed of 

 those fishes which travel overland 

 on the evaporation of the ponds in 

 which they live, that they invari- 

 ably march in the direction of the 

 nearest water, and even when cap- 



tured, and placed on the floor of 

 a room, their efforts to escape are 

 always made towards the same 

 point. Is the sense of smell suffi- 

 cient to account for this display of 

 instinct in them ? or is it aided by 

 special organs in the case of the 

 others ? Dr. Mc Gee, formerly of 

 the Royal Navy, writing to me on 

 the subject of the instant appear- 

 ance of flies in the vicinity of dead 

 bodies, says: "In warm climates 

 they do not wait for death to in- 

 vite them to the banquet. In 

 Jamaica I have again and again 

 seen them settle on a patient, and 

 hardly to be driven away by the 

 nurse, the patient himself saying, 

 ' Here are these flies coming to 

 eat me ere I am dead.' At times 

 they have enabled the doctor, when 

 otherwise he would have been in 

 doubt as to his prognosis, to deter- 

 mine whether the strange apyretic 

 interval occasionally present in the 

 last stage of yellow fever was the 

 fatal lull or the lull of recovery ; 

 and ' What say the flies ?' has been 

 the settling question. Among many, 

 many cases during a long period I 

 have seen but one recovery after 

 the assembling of the flies. I con- 

 sider the foregoing as a confir- 

 mation of smell being the guide 

 even to the attendants, a cada- 

 verous smell has been perceived to 

 arise from the body of a patient 

 twenty-four hours before death." 



o 3 



