Chap. 10.] 
ELEPHANTS. 
257 
separate from the males, just the same way as with other 
cattle. Elephants, when tamed, are employed in war, and 
carry into the ranks of the enemy towers fiUed with armed 
men ; and on them, in a very great measure, depends the ulti- 
mate result of the battles that are fought in the East. They 
tread under foot whole companies, and crush the men in their 
armour. The very least sound, however, of the grunting of 
the hog terrifies them : when wounded and panic-stricken, 
they invariably fall back, and become no less formidable for 
the destruction which they deal to their own side, than to 
their opponents. The African elephant is afraid of the Indian, 
and does not dare so much as look at it, for the latter is of 
much greater bulk.^^ 
CHAP. 10. (10.) THE BIRTH OF THE ELEPHANT, AND OTHER 
PAETICULAES RESPECTING IT. 
The vulgar notion is, that the elephant goes with young ten 
years but, according to Aristotle, it is two years only. He 
says also that the female only bears once, and then a single young 
one; that they live two hundred years, and some of them as much 
as three hundred. The adult age of the elephant begins at the 
sixtieth year.^^ They are especially fond of water, and wander 
much about streams, and this although they are unable to swim, 
in consequence of their bulk.^^ They are particularly sen- 
sitive to cold, and that, indeed, is their greatest enemy. They 
are subject also to flatulency, and to looseness of the bowels, but 
iElian, Anim. Nat. B. i. c. 38, states that the Eomans employed this 
mode of terrifying the elephants brought against them by Pyrrhus. — B. 
59 That this was the general opinion among the ancients, we learn from 
Polyhius, ^lian, Livy, Diodorus Siculus, and others. Cuvier remarks, 
that this may have been the case with the animals from Barbary, or the 
north of Africa, but that it is not so with those from the middle or south 
of that continent. — B. 
60 It has been stated, in a Note to chap. 5, that Mr. Corse found the 
period of the gestation of the elephant to be between twenty and twenty- 
one months. — B. 
61 ^lian, Aninu Nat. B. iv. c. 31, considers the age of sixty to be the 
prime period of their life, not the commencement of their prime. — B. 
62 This remark is incorrect ; when the water is sufficiently deep, it swims 
with ease ; and if the end of the trunk remains exposed to the atmosphere, 
it can dive below the surface, or swim with the body immersed. — B. 
VOL. II. S 
