kept at Versailles in the time of Louis XV., was so impatient of confinement, that he one night broke his chains, tore down the door of his cage, and rushed to a muddy pond in the park, where he was suffocated*. The elephants which were taken by the French from Holland had been accustomed, when quite young, to wander unrestrained in the park of the Petit Loo, browsing on the trees, and assisting each other to reach the branches †. When they were placed in cages for

Young Elephants browsing. removal, being separated, the male soon shivered his prison to pieces, and their departure was delayed

* Houel, Histoire des deux Eléphans, p. 15.

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for some weeks. Their travelling cages being at length made strong enough, they were indeed moved without serious injury; but the female broke one of her tusks in terror when she first saw the daylight, after a long continuance in a state of darkness. Upon the arrival of these elephants at Paris they were confined for some time in the usual absurd manner; but at length a proper inclosure was attached to their cages, and they were often permitted even a wider range, so that they could be viewed under circumstances something approaching to a state of nature. M. Houel says "I have occasionally seen the two elephants led into the garden of the Museum of Natural History, on fine days when the temperature was mild. The sight of the sun appeared to be to these creatures a source of the liveliest joy. The presence of this luminary refreshed them, as it refreshes every thing in nature; and their happiness was not concentrated in their thoughts, but manifested itself in every form of satisfaction. They bounded round each other, in a race of astonishing swiftness -they leaped from side to side, forward, backward; -they galloped-they trotted. All their movements were characterised by a sort of mad delight,—the expression of their love for liberty, which is innate in every being, and which the habit of slavery could not stifle*."

The quantity of food required for the daily consumption of a full-grown elephant is enormous. The elephant of Louis XIV. had daily eighty pounds of bread, twelve pints of wine, and a large quantity of vegetable soup, with bread and rice; this was exclusive of grass, and what he got from visitors. Desmarest states, that the domesticated elephant requires daily about two hundred pounds of aliment of all sorts.

* Histoire, &c., p. 56.

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It is recorded by one of the Roman historians, that the elephants which were taken from the Carthaginians, by Metellus, were so expensive to keep, that they were put to death in the Circus*. The elephant, if not well-fed, and with regularity, soon becomes a miserable object †.. Bishop Heber witnessed the wretched condition of an old elephant that had been cheated of his proper allowance. Adjoining the pool we saw a crowd of people assembled round a fallen elephant; apprehending that it was one of our own, I urged my horse to the spot. On asking, however, whose it was, a bystander said it belonged to 'the asylum of the world,' and had fallen down from weakness, which was not surprising, since, instead of an allowance of twenty-five rupees a month, necessary for the keep of an elephant, I was told that these poor creatures, all but those in the immediate stables of his majesty, had, for some time back, owing to the dilapidated state of the finances, and the roguery of the commissariat, received only five. They had now given the wretched animal a cordial, and were endeavouring to raise it on its legs, but in vain. It groaned pitifully, but lay quite helpless, and was, in fact, a mountain of skin and bone." This happened in the Nawâb Vizier's country, where elephants, not many years ago, were maintained in great numbers, from those resources which only Asiatic despotism could command. The cost of a stud of elephants, such as the Mogul princes kept up, must have been enormous. To each of the hundred and one elephants that were set apart for the Emperor Akbar's own riding, the daily allowance of food was two hundred pounds in weight. Most *See Pliny, liv. viii. c. 7. Williamson's Oriental Field Sports. ‡ Journal, vol. ii. p. 46.

of them, in addition, had ten pounds of sugar, besides rice, pepper, and milk. In the sugar-cane season, each elephant had daily three hundred canes *. The elephants of our English menageries are principally fed upon hay and carrots.

CHAPTER II.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE ELEPHANT, EXHIBITED IN CONNEXION WITH ITS NATURAL HABITS.

It has been well observed by a French naturalist, in speaking of the actions of animals, that those things which they learn through their intercourse with man are liable to change, and in reality do change, whenever there is any relaxation of the care with which the animals are taught: but that, on the contrary, those habits which depend only upon the laws of nature, and which are acquired without education, by the force of instinct, are as invariable as nature herself *. The elephants of the menageries, as we have described them in the previous chapter, may perform less astonishing tricks than the elephants of the Romans; and the elephants that carry the baggage and lift the guns of our troops in India, may be less tractable in war than those of Kublai Khan. Elephants were not intended by Nature to dance upon ropes, or to carry towers full of armed warriors upon their backs. If the men of other times, subduing this mighty beast to their use, taught him to turn aside from his natural habits to apply his sagacity and his strength to such purposes, and if the men of the present day have ceased thus to employ him, we must not conclude that his strength or his intelligence are, therefore, diminished. What he did in a state of nature two thousand years ago, he does now. His natural habits, as well as those of every other living thing, are derived from his or* Astruc, Histoire Naturelle du Languedoc.