Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/202

170 use a foot for a pillow on which to rest their heads. They are very human-like in many of their ways. They get a piece of wood and use it as a toothpick; they will plug a wound with clay; they scratch themselves with the tip of their trunk, or if they cannot reach the part they take up a small branch and use that.

When thoroughly alarmed and seized with a panic,—by no means a rare occurrence,—scarcely anything will stop an Elephant. A sportsman incautiously took his steed up to a dead Bear, as he thought; but in putting her hind foot on Bruin, from whom no more sport was expected, she began to jump and trumpet, and set off at a fearful pace:—"On looking round I saw that the Bear had hold with his teeth of the right side of the Elephant's buttock. I instantly fired, and Bruin this time really fell dead; but the Elephant continued her mad career,—the howdah was broken amongst the sal trees, and it was only on arriving at a river where another Elephant was tethered that she pulled up."

There has been much controversy regarding the age to which an Elephant is supposed to live. The late Mr. Sanderson wrote a charming book, 'Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India.' In it he stated he believed that these animals lived up to one hundred and fifty years; that is, that the ordinary duration of Behemoth's life was one hundred and fifty compared to that of a man's seventy. In this I think he was altogether mistaken. The same sources of information—viz. the mahouts—were equally open to me. I had Elephants under me for over twenty-one years. My jemadar was a Keddah Havildar. I knew Mr. Nuttal, superintendent of Keddahs, for over thirty years, and they ridiculed the idea of general longevity in these animals. Mr. H.D. Nuttal says:—

"I have had an Elephant trained in a fortnight, but it generally takes two months and often longer. I have had Elephants out Tiger shooting two and a half months after capture; and five months after capture I have had them out chasing wild Elephants in the jungles, and even lassoed others off their backs."

As to their duration of life, he makes the following remarks, and the reader must remember that this gentleman was a Keddah officer of very many years' standing:—