April 2, 1900.] TIlEi TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
An elephant inquest in London. 
Last Sunday afternoon (Feb. 18), while a conceit 
was being held at the Crystal Palace, an elephano 
belonging to a circus whicli had been performing 
there broke from its fastenings and killed its 
keeper. It then brushed through various parti- 
tions of wood and glass, and appeared in the 
main building, where a great number of persons 
were listening to the music. It did not attempt to 
hurt any of the crowd, though it broke off with its 
trunk the uplifted arm of a statue, probably under 
the idea that this represented a man about to 
strike. After some time it allowed itself to be 
secured by another elephant. It was then decided 
to kill the animal, and after a dose of poison had 
failed, a London gunmaker was sent for as execu- 
tioner and .shot the animal dead. 
On the following Wednesday an inquest was 
held on the body of the man. If it had been one 
of the trials of animals held by jurists in the 
middle Ages for the exhibition of legal subtlety, 
the evidence in favour of the elephant could not 
have been more clearly put. Mr. Sanger, its 
owner, admitted that the animal had once before 
killed a former keeper ; and he gave the facts 
which led to the death of the second. The facts 
speak for themselves. The first man had been 
discharged by Mr. Sanger fifteen months pre- 
viously for gross brutality to the animals. He 
came back and asked to be employed again. This 
was granted, and he was taken on, not as a keeper, 
but as a labeurer. The very first time he went 
into the stable the elephant, though it was quite 
dark at the time, instantly recognised the man's 
voice and 
AT ONCE CRUSHED HIM TO DEATH 
against the stall. Thac the creature had acted only 
in a panic of lion or at the reappearance of a tor- 
mentor was so well established at the previous in- 
quest that it was retained in the menagerie. It was 
exceptionally docile, and was taken through 
towns and villages all over England. Why then 
did he kill the second keeper ? Because this man, 
after his Sunday dinner, declared tliat he would 
pay out " the elephant for striking him with 
its trunk. He actually took a lance, one of those 
taken from the Arabs in the Soudan. (Those 
who have seen the trophies taken from 
the Mahdi's followers, now kept in the United 
Service Institution, will realise what a horrible 
weapon this was.) Followed by another keeper 
also armed wich a lance, he proceeded to "prod,' 
—i.e., pierce the chained elephant. The tortured 
creature after backing as far as it could, "at 
length rushed forward to escape the lance, broke 
its chains, threw down the keeper and trampled 
on him." If the elephant had been a man and 
had been put on his trial afterwards, would it 
be too much to anticipate that the verdict would 
have been one of justifiable homicide? All 
these facts, it is worth remembering, were sworn 
to on oath, They leave a very unpleasant im- 
pression as to the management of the " elephant 
herd '* in this country, It is perfectly clear that 
the animal was in each case influenced by re- 
sentment caused by the cruelty of one indivi- 
dual, Male elephants, apart from their occasional 
attacks of frenzy, are not as unaccotintably 
docile and submissive as the females, and most 
accidents which do occur in tiieir Jong lives are 
due to the gradual forgetfulness of this dilfer- 
ence of sex and temper by men who are so accus- 
tomed to witnessing the unhesitaking obedience 
of the one that they make too great demands 
on the forbearance of the other. At the present 
time the Indian Government, with the exception 
of a few males kept for parade, only employs 
female elephants for this reason ; even so it is 
believed that the |3ay or pensions ol mahouts is 
calculated with reference to the conviction that 
they pursue 
A DANGEROUS TRADE. 
The native princes, on the contrary, keep male ele- 
phants in large numbers for purposesof State, and it 
is among theattendants of these animals that "acci- 
dents " most commonly happen. Experience, as well 
as common report, which declares that every ele- 
phant kills a mahout in its lifetime, shows that 
in far the greater number of cases the person 
attacked is the animal's own attendant. This at 
first sight seems a contradiction to the general 
behaviour of animals in captivity, or even in 
domestication. Generally speaking, they are 
specially attached to the person who feeds them 
and gives them exercise, and if disposed to be 
savage, vent their anger on strangers. There are 
a few instances on record of horses attacking 
their grooms, but this, as a rule, is only because 
the attendant happened to be the only person 
near when the animal was in a bad temper. The 
only domestic animals which habitually attack 
their attendants are the bulls kept for stock- 
breeding in England, which are responsible for 
most intentional homicides caused by animals in 
this country. 
The grounds for the ill-will which the elephant 
often harbours towards its Indian mahout lie 
partly in the animal's temperament, partly in the 
character of these men. As most elephants be- 
have with propriety to their drivers, we must 
believe that either the greater number of the 
mahouts do their duty by the beasts, or that the 
latter are exceptionally forgiving. But there must 
be more than mere hearsay in the general 
belief that the mahouts commonly steal and ap- 
propriate a very large part of the elephant's al- 
lowance of food, that they are in consequence often 
half-starved and -hungry, and that the men use 
their steel-hooked and spiked " ankus " in a very 
merciless way on animals which are often not in 
condition to do the work which is set them. As the 
COST OF AN ELEPHANTS KEiP 
is from £4 to £8 per month, in proportion to the food 
given him a proportion and quality which is fixed in 
reference to the work to be done, the margin for 
stealing is very great, being reckoned between the 
minimum necessary to keep the animal alive on 
low diet, and that} required for keening him in 
fine condition on the march in a campaign, when 
he is allowed extra rations, and even a bottle of 
rum per diem. No other animal is clever enough 
to know that overwork and underfeeding are 
probably caused by the direct agency of the man 
who maintains him. But it is pretty certain that 
the extraordinary intelligence of the elephant does 
enable it to put two and two together, and to 
conclude that che person who gives him little food 
ought not to punish him for not being up to his 
work. In any case the elepliant bears no grati- 
tude to the man who, if he can, gives him star- 
vation rations, and is his daily slave-driver ; and 
as long as native usage holds that " the driver 
and three generations of his family shall live on 
the beast he is paid to nourish" it must be ex- 
pected that the animal will occasionally try the 
experiment as to whether the next generation can 
possibly be worse than its present tormentor. It 
is sometimes forgotten that an elephant may live 
for seventy or eighty years, or even longer, in 
the service of man, and that in the unchanging 
East he may, through this long life, be farmed aa 
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