FOOD. 
291 
knees. Boulandja discharges his gnn—his elephant 
assumes the same attitude as the other two; and 
all the rest, even to the eleventh, kneel in suc¬ 
cession. 
“ Great God ! Twenty guns—forty guns charged, 
if we had possessed them. c Reload, lads, and 
quickly. 5 But the laugh that this grotesque scene 
created, deprived us of strength and the power 
of motion. 
“ I had time, however, to fire at the last of the 
troop as they were retreating, and, as a souvenir , 
lodged a ball in its buttocks. 
“ One alone remained on the spot, but standing 
in a defiant attitude, when a ball in the brain 
caused him to sink dead to the ground, like a 
tower that had been undermined. 55 
“Never during my Jager life, 55 Delegorgue goes 
on to say, “have I witnessed a similar scene to 
that described above. Meanwhile I am far from 
disbelieving that with animals collected together a 
spirit of imitation does exist. 55 
The food of the elephant consists of grasses, 
herbs, as also of succulent roots, of the situation 
of which he is advised by his exquisite sense of 
smell. To obtain them he turns up the ground 
with his tusks, in the manner of a hog, so that at 
times whole acres may be seen where one would 
almost suppose the plough had been doing its work. 
He also feeds largely on the shoots, smaller branches, 
and roots of certain trees, to gain access to which 
he applies one of his tusks, as we would a crow¬ 
bar, to the roots of the tree, to loosen the soil, and 
u 2 
