The elephant has an equal terror of the rhinoceros, It appears, from some statements in which Mr. Williamson confided, that if a herd of elephants encounter this formidable animal, they retreat, if possible, without hazarding an encounter. Major Lally stated to the author of Oriental Field Sports, that he once witnessed, from a distant hill, a most desperate engagement between a large male and a rhinoceros, in which the elephant was worsted and fled *. From *The cut representing an "Elephant attacked by a Rhino" is from Capt. Williamson's work. ceros the Memoirs of Baber, however, we collect that the terror is mutual. "When we had gone a short way, a man came after us with notice that a rhinoceros had entered a little wood near Bekrâm, and that they had surrounded the wood, and were waiting for us. We immediately proceeded towards the wood, at full gallop, and cast a ring round it. Instantly, on our raising the shout, the rhinoceros issued out into the plain, and took to flight. They followed it for nearly a kos, shot many arrows at it, and finally brought it down. This rhinoceros did not make a good set at any person, or any horse. They afterwards killed another rhinoceros. I had often amused myself with conjecturing how an elephant and rhinoceros would behave if brought to face each other; on this occasion the elephant keepers brought out the elephants so that one elephant fell right in with the rhinoceros. As soon as the elephant-drivers put their beasts in motion, the rhinoceros would not come up, but immediately ran off in another direction *.' *Memoirs, p. 292. CHAPTER VIII. EMPLOYMENT OF ELEPHANTS IN THE EAST, CONTINUED. -EXHIBITIONS OF CRUELTY. -PROCESSIONS AND CEREMONIALS. THE delight in brutal sports, which, in all ages and in all countries, has been felt by the multitude-that is, by the high as well as the low vulgaris too universal to be ascribed to particular conditions of social refinement. Sound knowledge, leading the mind to despise the coarse excitements of unintellectual curiosity, and genuine religion, which teaches us Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels," must indeed greatly diminish the popular tendency towards such gratifications. Nevertheless, amongst all nations, that rude exercise of instinctive tyranny, which makes the school-boy torment a chafer, and the ferocious" children of a larger growth" assemble to witness the sufferings of a bear or a badger, still displays itself in a thousand forms of cruelty, in spite of the control of education, the chastisements of law, or the power of public opinion. In tracing the history of particular quadrupeds, it will be necessary to exhibit the infinitely various modes in which a perverse ingenuity has compelled them to administer a barbarous pleasure to the cruel propensities of man. Such inquiries are painful and revolting,—but they cannot be omitted; for they shew, perhaps more forcibly than any other instances, how the sense of right and wrong is deadened by custom; and how, therefore, by the evil power of example, and the nourishment of a heartless sophistry, the most exalted in rank amongst refined nations,-magistrates, statesmen, and even women, whose principal attributes should be delicacy and tenderness-have not only come to look upon public exhibitions of cruelty without abhorrence, but absolutely to rejoice and feel proud in witnessing the fierce contests of animals whose passions have been artificially excited-to be critical in their observance of the prowess of the contending victims-to mark with rapture the glazing eye and the quivering limb of the weaker in the fight-and to shout over the agonies of exhausted nature, with the glory of the savage that has sated his vengeance upon his enemy at the stake. The elephant, although the mildest and most inoffensive of quadrupeds, has always been a sufferer from this propensity of man to cruel sports. In India, elephants are to this day baited; and the native chiefs and nobles attach great importance to these displays. When Bishop Heber was at the Court of Baroda, "The Raja," he says, “was anxious to know whether I had observed his rhinoceros and his hunting tigers, and offered to shew me a day's sport with the last, or to bait an elephant for me; a cruel amusement which is here not uncommon. I do not think he understood my motive for declining to be present. A Mussulman, however, who sat near him, seemed pleased by my refusal, said it was very good,' and asked me if any of the English clergy attended such sports. I said it was a maxim with most of us to do no harm to any creature needlessly: which was, he said, the doctrine |