till he had formed a considerable pile, arranged with undeviating order. The boxes contained the treasure of the Rajah of Travancore, who had died in the night, and of whose property the English commander had taken possession, thus removing the more valuable for greater security."

Williamson says that "many elephants are, by custom, brought to the habit of tying their own legs at night. The flexibility of their trunk renders them capable of performing even more dexterous things than this. The one at Chiswick, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, would uncork a bottle of water and empty the contents into her mouth, without spilling a drop. The keeper was accustomed to ride on her neck, like the mohouts in India. Upon alighting, which she allowed him to do by kneeling, he desired her to take off the cloth on which he had been sitting. This she effected by putting the muscles of her loins in action, so that the shrinking of her skin might shake off the cloth. The elephant would carefully smoothe it on the grass with her trunk, fold it up as a napkin is folded, and poising it with

her trunk for a few seconds, jerk it over her head to the centre of her back, where it would remain as steady as if placed by human hands. The affection of this poor animal for her keeper was very great; she would cry after him whenever he was absent for more than a few hours. At his voice she would come out of her house, take up a broom, and follow him round the enclosure, ready at his bidding either to sweep the paths, or, with a pail or watering-pot, show her readiness to take that share of labour which the elephants of the East are so willing to perform. Her reward was a carrot and some water. This interesting creature died in 1829, at about twenty-one years of age. We have understood that her disease was pulmonary consumption.

The elephant is endowed with peculiar acuteness of hearing, which arises, Sir Everard Home states, from the drum, and every part of the ear, being much larger in proportion than in other quadrupeds, or in man. The cells in the skull of the elephant explain the sounds from the ground striking his ear with more force, and explains an

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assertion very generally believed, that this animal, when he comes to a bridge, tries the strength of it by his foot, and if his ear is not satisfied with the vibration, nothing can induce him to pass over it.

In Knight's "Menagerie," it is said that the elephant who was brought out upon the stage of the Adelphi would not at first be led to any particular point, till she had carefully tried the strength of the boards upon which she trod. When landing at Plymouth, she refused to walk on the first platform that was laid from the vessel's side, and would not cross until one of firmer planks was placed for her progress. In Johnson's "Indian Field Sports," there is an anecdote of one who was cruelly compelled to attempt crossing a bridge: before he could get over, the bridge gave way, and he was precipitated into the river. The driver was killed, and the sagacious animal considerably injured.

The quantity of food consumed daily, by a fullgrown elephant, is very great; if not well fed, it becomes a miserable object. "The cost of a stud of elephants, such as the Mogul princes rode on,

must have been enormous. In India, at the present time, a common elephant will cost about one thousand rupees, 100%.; but if large and tractable, he cannot be purchased under four or five thousand. 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 of them, in addition to this, 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 menageries are principally fed upon hay and carrots. 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 what he got from visitors.*

Two elephants, in the Jardin des Plantes, in 1786, consumed every day a hundred pounds weight of hay, and eighteen pounds of bread, besides several bunches of carrots, and a great quantity of potatoes. In summer they drank about thirty * Knight's Menagerie.

pails of water during the day. In a state of nature the elephant may be said to destroy as much food as he consumes, as well by tearing down trees, as by his broad, flat feet amongst the vegetation. Major Denham, in his journey from Mowrzook to Kouka, came upon elephants' footmarks of an immense size. Whole trees were broken down where they had fed, and where they had reposed their ponderous bodies, young trees, shrubs, and underwood, had been crushed beneath their weight. Four days after, he saw the herd in grounds annually overflowed by the waters of a lake, where the coarse grass is twice the height of a man. They seemed to cover the face of the country.

In the "London Weekly Review" for March, 1828, there is an interesting letter from Mr. Pringle, describing a herd of wild elephants, from which we have taken some extracts. "During my residence on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony, I accompanied a party of English officers on a short excursion into a tract of country then termed the Neutral Territory. It comprised an irregular area of about 2,000,000 acres, and had