Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/518

502 and wholly voluntary solicitude for the safety of his human attendants can not be due to anything else than independent reasoning. The most intelligent dog is apt to greet his master by planting a pair of dirty paws on his coat or trousers. The most sensible carriage-horse is liable to step on his master's foot or crowd him against a wall in a moment of excitement; but even inside the keddah, with wild elephants all about, and a captive elephant hemmed in by two, three, or four tame ones, the noosers actually work under the bodies and between the feet of the tame animals until the feet of the captive are tied.

All who have witnessed the tying of captives, one by one, in a keddah, wherein a whole wild herd have been entrapped, testify to the human-like quality of intelligence displayed by all the tame elephants who assist in the tying and leading out and subjugation of the captives. They enter into the business with both spirit and understanding, and as occasion requires will deceitfully cajole or vigorously punish a troublesome captive. Sir Emerson Tennent asserts that the tame elephants display the most perfect conception of every movement, both of the object to be attained and the means to accomplish it. While this statement probably exceeds the exact truth, it truthfully conveys the impression made upon the beholder.

We come now to the second intellectual quality, or.

So far as this may be regarded as an index of an animal's mental capacity, the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the elephant. Every one who attended either Barnum's or Forepaugh's circus during the last year witnessed an imitation military drill performed by from twelve to sixteen elephants, which, in animals of any other species, would be considered a most remarkable performance. The following were the commands given by the trainer, understood and remembered by each elephant, and executed without an instant's hesitation or any mistake. These we will call the

 1. Fall in line. 2. Roll-call. (As each elephant's name is called, he takes his place in another rank.) 3. Present arms. (Trunk uplifted, with tip curved forward and held in that position for a short time.) 4. Forward, march. 5. File left, march. 6. Right about face, march. 7. Left about face, march. 8. Right by twos, march. 9. Double quick, march. 10. Single file, march. 11. File right.