Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/597

. 14, 1863.] his death, but he survived the one hundred and twenty shots for an hour.

There is something to my mind extremely affecting in this account of the torture inflicted on a poor beast, and of his docility and obedience to his keeper under his sufferings. That he was possessed of no common intelligence is proved by the fact of his refusing to eat the poisoned buns and hay, and the following instance will also show that he occasionally evinced qualities which almost amounted to reason.

On one occasion I went to see this elephant, and on entering the space before his den I observed a bucket containing a quantity of small round potatoes. I took one of them, and as he was in the act of removing it out of my hand it dropped on the floor by accident. The animal tried to reach it with his proboscis, but as it was round it rolled away from him. After two or three ineffectual efforts to pick it up, he leant against the bar of his den, straightened his trunk, blew strongly against the potatoe, and sent it against the opposite wall, from which it rebounded towards him, when he was enabled to secure it. Here was an instance of sense or sagacity, and, as I said before, almost of reason. Indeed the elephant has been called a half-reasoning animal, and in this instance it could not have been instinct alone which taught him to procure his food in the manner I have described. It must have been some intellectual faculty which I am unable to define, but it was at all events an extraordinary circumstance. Milton, in speaking of animals, says,

They also know

And reason not contemptibly:—