chased, for he can drawn up therein a great quantity of water, and shoote it forth againe, to the amazement and the overthrow of them that persecute him."

The height of the elephant has been greatly exaggerated. "Of all earthly creatures," says Topsell, "an elephant is the greatest: for in India they are nine cubits high, and five cubits broad; in Affrica foureteene or fifteene ful spans, which is about eleven foot high, and proportionable in bredth, which caused Ælianus to write that one Elephant is as big as three Bugils; and among these the males are ever greater then the females. In the kingdome of Melinda, in Affricke, there were two young ones, not above six monthes old, whereof the least was great as the greatest oxe, but his flesh was as much as you shall find in two oxen; the other was much greater."

These dimensions are tolerably large; but an altitude of from seventeen to twenty feet has been ascribed by others to the elephants of Madras. The average height, however, seems to be under ten feet, measured from the wither or top of the shoulder: that of the skeleton of Chuny in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, is about nine feet six inches from the pedestal on which it stands to the top of the head; and the male elephant, now in the garden of the Zoological Society of London, in the Regent's Park, measures about nine feet six inches from the ground to the top of the shoulder. One belonging to a vizier of Oude was twelve feet two inches high when his head was raised as he marched in state, and measured ten feet six inches from the ground to the top of the shoulder. This was the only instance known to Mr. Corse, who was indefatigable in collecting accurate information on the subject, of an elephant exceeding ten feet in height. He had indeed some trouble in getting at the truth of rumours spread abroad by those who had seen the animal, relative to the ultra-gigantic proportions of one at Dacca belonging to the nabob, and said to be about fourteen feet high.

Now Mr. Corse had formerly seen this very elephant, and then, judging from his eye, had supposed the height of the animal to be twelve feet. Determined to ascertain the fact, he set out for Dacca, where the mahout of the elephant in question assured Mr. Corse that his charge was from ten to twelve cubits high-in other words, from fifteen to eighteen feet, but that he dared not bring the animal for Mr. Corse's examination without the permission of the nabob. Mr. Corse, however, who from experience knew that the eye is occasionally endowed with a high magnifying power, especially in cases where old prejudices exist, was not to be satisfied with this evidence, direct as it was, and good as it seemed. He asked the nabob's permission to apply the test of actual measurement, it was granted, and the dimensions of the animal immediately shrank under its exact severity. Its height did not exceed ten feet. Le Vaillant, it is true, mentions an enormous African elephant which he wounded, and which, he says, was at least thirteen feet high, with tusks which, to judge by the eye, could not have weighed less than a hundred and twenty pounds each. But the animal escaped, and Le Vaillant had no opportunity of measuring it accurately.

Pringle, too, came suddenly upon a male of this species, which two officers of engineers, who were with him, and had been familiar with the sight of wild elephants, agreed was at least fourteen feet in height: here again there was no actual measurement.

The Asiatic is as fastidious with reference to the perfection of his elephant as he is with regard to female beauty. Oriental writers dwell upon the normal points of loveliness in the form of woman; nor are they less particular in laying down the laws of proportion which ought to govern the full development of an elephant without blemish.

A perfect elephant must have large rounded ears, without ragged or indented edges. His eyes, free from specks, should be dark hazel. Neither black nor dark spots of any size ought to disfigure the roof of his mouth or his tongue. His trunk must be large and well developed. His tail should be long, and the terminal tuft of hair should nearly reach to the ground. On each of his fore-feet there ought to be five nails, and on each of his hind-feet four, making his full complement eighteen. His head should be well set on, and carried high and stately. The curve of his back ought to rise gradually from the shoulder to the middle, whence it should decline to the setting on of the tail. His limbs must be strong, and his joints firm and well knit.

The quantity of food necessary for the support of this colossal frame is great, and the expense of keeping a large body of elephants, as was formerly the practice in India for war or ceremony, must have been excessive. Akbar's own stud, kept for his personal use, amounted to one hundred and one, and the daily allowance to each was two hundred pounds of food. The greater number had, moreover, ten pounds of sugar, in addition to rice, pepper, and milk. Three hundred sugar-canes were daily supplied to each of them during the cane season. The elephant kept by Louis Quartorze had a daily allowance of eighty pounds of bread, twelve pints of wine, and an enormous mess of vegetable soup, with rice and bread. These were his ordinary provisions, and he picked up no small gleanings besides in the shape of grass and presents from visiters.

The daily rations of Jack, the male elephant kept in the garden of the Zoological Society of London, and now about thirty years old, are a truss and a half of hay, forty-two pounds of Swedish turnips, a mash consisting of three pounds of boiled rice, a bushel of chaff, and half a bushel of bran, ten pounds of sea-biscuit, a bundle of straw for his bed, weighing about thirty-six pounds, which he usually eats by the morning, and thirty-six pails of water.

Besides this he collects no small portion of savoury alms from the public. Formerly his allowance was larger, and he had oats and mangel-wurzel; but at that time Sunday was a day of fasting with him (as it still is to the carnivora) only broken by a slight morning meal. Some four or five years ago he determined to stand this hebdomadal privation no longer, and for two or three successive Sabbath-nights he made such a disturbance that the keepers had small repose. Finding that this hint was not taken, he went a little further next time, and so bestirred himself that, like other agitators who have known exactly how far to go, he carried his point; for he made an attack upon his door with such good-will and effect that they were fain to get up in the middle of the night to feed him. Since this demonstration of physical force he has enjoyed his full meals on Sundays.

While writing this, a curious instance of his ingenuity has come to our knowledge. The boarded ceiling in front of his apartment is low compared to the height within, but still it was thought to be sufficiently lofty. He has lately, tired probably by his long winter confinement,

commenced operations upon it and pulled down some of the boards. The nice application of the tools with which nature has furnished him was cleverly manifested on this occasion. Raising his head suddenly, he drove his tusk through a board, splitting it with the blow; he then applied the finger of his trunk to the aperture, and tore away till he was found out and stopped. Nothing could be more unpromising than the smooth surface of planks above his head, or could have afforded less opportunity for grasping; but he tried it with his proboscis, found it hollow, and pierced it with his tusk, so as to obtain trunk-hold. This was very like reasoning.

The necessary daily aliment for the elephant in a state of domestication may be stated, on an average, at about two hundred pounds. Twenty-five rupees a month is the modern Asiatic allowance for each elephant.

Le Vaillant had a view of the mode in which the wild African elephants feed, and he thus describes their method of purifying their ligneous salads before they become the grist of the powerful mill which we have above attempted to describe. From the top of an eminence at the edge of a wood he perceived four in some very thick bushes, and taking care to get to the leeward of them he approached with great precaution. For half an hour did he survey them while they were eating the extremities of the branches. Before they took the branches into their mouths, they beat them three or four times with their trunks, in order, as he imagined, to shake off the ants and insects. This done, they grasped with their trunks all the branches they could, and conveying them to their mouths always on the left side, swallowed them without much chewing. He remarked that they preferred those branches which were best furnished with leaves, and that they were, besides, extremely fond of a yellow fruit, when it was ripe, which in the country is called a cherry.

But it would seem that after a long fast, or in moments of carelessness, the purifying process above noticed by Le Vaillant is occasionally neglected, for the worthy Topsell drawing from the ancient legends, and especially from Pliny, who never let a wonderful story pass unnoted, tells us that "They live upon the fruits of plants and roots, and with their truncks and heads overthrow the tops of trees, and eat the boughes and bodies of them, and many times upon the leaves of trees he devoureth chamæleons, whereby he is poisoned, and dieth if hee eat not immediately a wilde olive!" The bane and antidote are equally credible. Topsell then proceeds to state that they are so loving to their fellows that they will not eat their meat alone, but having found a prey "they go and invite the residue to their feastes and cheere, more like to reasonable, civill men, then unreasonable brute beasts." He thus describes the domesticated elephant's apolaustic propensities.

"It will forbeare drinke eight daies together, and drinke wine to drunkennesse like an ape. It is delighted above measure with sweet savours, oyntments, and smelling flowers, for which cause their keeper will in the summer time lead them into the meadowes of flowers, where they of themselves will, by the quickness of their smelling, chuse out and gather the sweetest flowers, and put them into a basket if their keeper have any; which being filled, like daintie and neate men, they also desire to wash, and so will go and seeke out water to wash themselves,

and of their owne accord returne backe againe to the basket of flowers, which if they find not they will bray and call for them. Afterward, being led into their stable, they will not eat meat untill they take of their flowers and dresse the brimmes of their maungers therewith, and likewise strewe their roome or standing-place, pleasing themselves with their meat, because of the savour of the flowers stuck about their cratch, like dainty fed persons which set their dishes with greene hearbs, and put them into their cups of wine."

Great longevity was attributed to these quadrupeds. More than four hundred years of life were anciently supposed to be their portion, if their career was not shortened by sickness or accident. This enormous duration seems to have been allotted to them principally on the faith of a story relating to one marked in a particular manner which was captured by a King of Lydia four hundred years after a battle in which this remarkable animal had figured. A little cross-examination might possibly have thrown some doubt on the identity, and it is hardly necessary to observe how improbable it is that any living frame could sustain the wear and tear of four centuries. Still there are cases on record of elephants having been in captivity, in more modern times, for a hundred years, and even for a hundred and thirty, to which credit ought not to be rashly denied. In a vegetable-feeding quadruped the duration of the teeth offers a fair criterion by which to judge of the probable extent of life, and we think that Sir Everard Home is the physiologist who has observed that the teeth of the deer and sheep are worn down in much less than fifteen years; those of the ox-tribe in about twenty years; those of the horse in forty or fifty years; while those of the elephant will last for a century. The longevity of the last-mentioned animal must be, therefore, in all probability very considerable, although falling far short of the ancient estimate.

The period of gestation is between twenty and twenty-one months. Mr. Corse records the birth of a fine young male thirty-five inches and a half high, at the expiration of twenty months and eighteen days. The breasts are situated on the chest, and the young one takes the nourishment with the mouth, not with the trunk, as Perrault and Buffon insisted, in contradiction to the actual observation of Le Vaillant. So much for the value of analogical reasoning by closet zoologists when opposed to the experience of out-door naturalists-men who have endured and still endure the greatest fatigues and privations, that they may watch the operations of nature in the forest and the desert, and too often reap for their reward the sneers of incredulous and ignorant critics, who have never passed the boundaries of sea-coal fires and sooty trees. The error of the trunk-sucking faction was strengthened by those who had seen the young elephant or calf, as it is termed, touching the breast of its mother with its proboscis; but it no more sucks with that organ than a child does with its hand.

All the young elephants seen by Mr. Corse, began to nibble and suck the breast, to use his own expressions, soon after birth, pressing it with the trunk to make the milk flow more readily. He says, that the mothers never lie down to give their young ones this first and natural food, and that it often happens when the dam stands high on her legs that she is obliged to bend her body towards her offspring to enable it to reach the nipple with its mouth. Mr. Corse well remarks

that, if ever the trunk was used to lay hold of this part in the mother, it would be upon such occasions, and at this period, when the young one is making laborious efforts to reach it with the mouth, which it could at all times easily effect with its trunk, if that would have answered the purpose. He had often observed the young elephant grasp the nipple, which projects horizontally from the breast, with the side of its mouth, and he adds, that it is a common practice with the natives of India to raise a small mound of earth some six or eight inches high, for the young one to stand on, thus saving the mother the trouble of bending her body every time she gives her calf the breast, an effort which she could not make with ease when tied to her picket.

The general evidence is in favour of the female elephants as affectionate mothers, and the painful story recorded by Bruce, whose heart was evidently a very kind one, shows that strong filial attachment is felt by the young.

After an animated description of an Abyssinian elephant-hunt, the African traveller thus concludes: "There now remained but two elephants of those that had been discovered, which were a she one with a calf. The agageer would willingly have left these alone, as the teeth of the female are very small, and the young one is of no sort of value, even for food, its flesh shrinking much upon drying; but the hunters would not be limited in their sport. The people having observed the place of her retreat, thither we eagerly followed. She was very soon found, and as soon lamed by the agageers; but when they came to wound her with their darts, as every one did in turn, to our very great surprise, the young one, which had been suffered to escape unheeded and unpursued, came out from the thicket, apparently in great anger, running upon the horses and men with all the violence it was master of. I was amazed, and, as much as ever I was upon such an occasion, afflicted, at seeing the great affection of the little animal defending its wounded mother, heedless of its own life or safety. I therefore cried to them for God's sake to spare the mother-though it was then too late, and the calf had made several rude attacks upon me which I avoided with difficulty; but I am happy to this day in the reflection that I did not strike it At last, making his attacks upon Ayto Engedan, it hurt him a little upon the leg; upon which he thrust it through with his lance as others did after, and it then fell dead before its wounded mother, whom it had so affectionately defended."

According to the interesting account of Mr. Crawfurd, upon whose narrative the most undoubting reliance may be safely placed, the young male elephants are weaned at Ava when they are three years old; in other words, they are there separated from their dams and broken in. Their youth and domestication, it might be thought, would render this an easy process; but it appears to be as tedious and difficult as the reduction of a full-grown elephant, captured in the forest, to obedient subjection.

Mr. Crawfurd relates, that previous to the commencement of the separation and tuition of the infant elephants, a ceremony, consisting of an invocation to the genius of elephant-hunting, who rejoices in the appellation of Nat Udin-main-so, is celebrated. Between the walls of the town, and an artificial mount verdant with trees, and raised upon a ledge of rock, jutting into the Irawadi, is a small elephant paddock, a