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CHAPTER IY. 
GREGARIOUS HABITS OF THE ELEPHANT—LARGE HERDS—HAUNTS 
—HABITS—IMITATIVE FACULTIES—A SQUADRON OF ELEPHANTS 
—FOOD ON WHICH THEY SUBSIST—TREES UPROOTED BY ELE¬ 
PHANTS—NOT A RUMINATING ANIMAL—QUANTITY OF WATER 
DRUNK BY THE ELEPHANT—THROWING WATER OVER THE BODY 
—PROTECTION FROM THE SUN. 
HE elephant is gregarious. ce Like the beaver/ 9 
J- says Buffon, “ it loves the society of its 
species. Elephants understand each other, assemble, 
disperse, and act in concert." 
Ordinarily the herd consists of females, with their 
calves, and young males; but the former are much 
more numerous than the latter, probably, in the 
proportion of twenty to one. It is a remarkable 
fact that, neither in my own experience nor in that 
of the elephant-hunters of my acquaintance, have 
full-grown males (excepting in very rare instances) 
been met with in company with the cows. On only 
a single occasion, and that out of a herd of perhaps 
little less than three hundred females, Mr. Oswald 
informs me, does he recollect having met with a 
mature male in their society, and the individual in 
question, singularly enough, had not even the rudi¬ 
ments of tusks. The old bulls keep to themselves. 
