626 
VERTEBRATA. 
all those Avhich are used are taken from their native haunts and then trained. The modes of 
capturing them are various : sometimes a large number of the Indian hunters combine and con- 
trive to drive the herd into a strong inclosure, where they are separately subdued. Sometimes 
the hunters proceed into the woods, accompanied by two trained females. "When a herd is 
met with, these advance quietly, and by their blandishments so occupy the attention of any 
unfortunate m-ale they come up with, that the hunters are enabled to tie his legs together and 
fasten him to a tree. His treacherous companions now leave him to struggle in impotent rage, 
until he is so subdued by hunger and fatigue that the hunters can drive him home between their 
two tame elephants. Sometimes, however, these hunting adventures are more exciting. The 
following account is descriptive of an attempt to catch elephants in Nepaul : 
"The whole batch, tame and wild ones, then rushed into a deep river close by, where it was a 
splendid sight to see them swimming, fighting, diving, plunging, kicking, and bellowing in a most 
frantic manner ; the mahouts — the riders on the tame ones — ^sti eking to them like monkeys, and 
dexterously taking the opportunity of the confusion to secure the dreaded noose round their 
necks. One of the wild elephants in the struggle got half drowned, and then entirely strangled ; 
she just staggered to the shore, and then dropped dead without a struggle. It was really quite 
piteous to see her poor little young one, about ten days old ; she kept walking round the body, 
pushing it, and trying to coax her dead mother to rise up, then uttering the most heart-rending 
cries, and lying down by her side, as it were to comfort her. 
"When the contest was over, and the other elephants — tame ones — were brought up near the 
corpse, the poor little thing, with the most indignant, though of course, unavailing valor, charged 
on all sides at any elephant who came near, determined, evidently, to defend its mother, even 
though dead, to the last. The tame ones of course M'ere too sagacious to hurt it with their 
tusks, and looked on with the most curious air of pity and contempt, as they gradually, despite 
its violent struggles, pushed it away from its mother to a place where it could be properly se- 
cured and taken care of. Really its moans and endeavors to remain with its mother were quite 
affecting." 
There are several castes or varieties of the elephant, as the Koo7nareah, meaning, of a princely 
race; the Merghee, a hunting elephant; the male Dauntelah is noted for its large tusks; the 
Mooknah have much smaller ones ; the Goodnah are particularly large males, seldom captured, 
and when taken, ferocious and destructive. Some of these cannot brook confinement, and lan- 
guish and die in captivity. There is almost as much difference in the domestic elephants, as to 
gait, docility, strength, and serviceableness, as in horses. 
The tusks of botli species — the African as well as the Asiatic — still form, as they did from the 
earliest periods, a valuable article of commerce. The ivory, which is now sought for useful pur- 
poses and ornaments of minor importance, such as knife-handles, billiard-balls, chess-men, combs, 
&c., was in great request with the ancient Greeks and Romans for various domestic uses, as well 
as for the chrys-elephantine statuary rendered so famous by Phidias. Of these rich statues the 
Minerva of the Parthenon, and especially the Olympian Jupiter, appear to have been the master- 
pieces. Among the tusks found there are some which indicate the rough usage these animals 
have received from the hands of man. Sometimes a musket-ball has been found imbedded in one 
without any aperture or mark to show how it got there. In these cases, the ball has penetrated 
the root of the tusk, and been pushed forward by successive growths of ivory as the tusk increased 
in size. A spear-head has been found in the same position. It is said that forty-five thousand 
elephant-tusks are brought every year to Shefiield, in England, at a cost of one hundred and thirty 
thousand dollars. Five hundred persons are there occupied as ivory workers ! 
The elephant occupies the greater part of the warm countries of Asia, and the great islands of 
Sumatra and Borneo. Those of the provinces of Chittagong are chiefly used in the service of 
the East India Company, but those of the Birman territories and of Pegu are of a superior breed. 
These animals are abundant in the southern part of Nepaul. Those found in Ceylon, having a 
lighter and smaller head and higher fore-quarters than others, are supposed by Hodgson to be 
distinct species; at all events they are a marked variety. 
From time immemorial the Asiatic Elephant has been brought under the dominion of man, 
