218 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. VII. 



tions, the activity of his eye, and the earnestness of his 

 attitudes, can only be comprehended by being seen. In 

 moving timber and masses of rock his trunk is the in- 

 strument on which he mainly relies, but those which 

 have tusks turn them to good account. To get a weighty 

 stone out of a hollow an elephant will kneel, down so as 

 to apply the pressure of his head to move it upwards, 

 then steadying it with one foot till he can raise himself, 

 he will apply a fold of his trunk to shift it to its place, 

 and fit it accurately in position : this done, he will step 

 round to view it on either side, and adjust it with due 

 precision. He appears to gauge his task by his eye, and 

 to form a judgment whether the weight be proportion- 

 ate to his strength. If doubtful of his own power, he 

 hesitates and halts, and if urged against his will, he roars 

 and shows temper. 



In clearing an opening through forest land, the power 

 of the African elephant, and the strength ascribed to him 

 by a recent traveller, as displayed in uprooting trees, have 

 never been equalled or approached by anything I have 

 seen of the elephant in Ceylon 1 or heard of them in India. 



1 " Here the trees were large and 

 handsome, but not strong enough 

 to resist the inconceivable strength 

 of the mighty monarch of these 

 forests ; almost every tree had half 

 its branches broken short by them 

 and at every hundred yards I came 

 upon entire trees, and these, the 

 largest in the forest, uprooted clean 

 out of the ground, and broken short 

 across their stems." — A Hunter's 

 Life in South Africa. ByR. Gor- 

 don Cumming, vol. ii. p. 305. — 

 " Spreading out from one another, 

 they smash and destroy all the 

 finest trees in the forest which 

 happen to be in their course. . . . 

 I have rode through forests where 



the trees thus broken lay so thick 

 across one another, that it was 

 almost impossible to ride through 

 the district." — Ibid., p. 310. 



Mr. Gordon Cumming does not 

 name the trees which he saw thus 

 " uprooted " and " broken across," 

 nor has he given any idea of their 

 size and weight; but Major Den- 

 ham, who observed like traces of 

 the elephant in Africa, saw only 

 small trees overthrown by them; 

 and Mr. Pringle, who had an 

 opportunity of observing similar 

 practices of the animals in the 

 neutral territory of the Eastern 

 frontier of the Cape of Good Hope, 

 describes their ravages as being 



