Wild beasts

Transcriber’s Note
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THE ELEPHANT.
Wild Beasts
A STUDY OF THE CHARACTERS AND HABITS OF THE ELEPHANT, LION, LEOPARD, PANTHER, JAGUAR, TIGER, PUMA, WOLF, AND GRIZZLY BEAR
BY J. HAMPDEN PORTER
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1894
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
TO Captain John G. Bourke U. S. ARMY IN TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE TIME WHEN WE STUDIED TOGETHER
The elephant—“My Lord the Elephant,” as he is called in India—takes precedence of other quadrupeds upon several counts. Among these appear conspicuously the facts that he belongs to an ancient and isolated family, which has no near relations occupying lower stations in life; likewise, that from time immemorial these creatures have been strong enough to do as they pleased. This latter circumstance more particularly ensured the sincere respect of mankind, and throughout the records of the race we find its members in distinguished positions. Ganesha, the Hindu god of wisdom, had an elephant’s head, and Elephas Indicus was worshipped from Eastern China to the highlands of Central India. In Africa this species only escaped adoration because the natives of that country were incapable of conceiving any of those abstract ideas which the animal embodied. Wherever an elephant has existed, however, men have looked up to him, and as he was not carnivorous, it comported with human reasoning to extol the benevolence of a being who, if otherwise constituted, might have done so much harm.
Oriental, classic, mediæval, and modern superstitions cluster about the elephant. Pliny and Ælian often seem to be mocking at popular credulity. “ Valet sensu et reliquâ sagacitate ingenii excellit elephas ,” says Aristotle, and Strabo writes in the same strain. One might nearly as well take the verses of Martial for a text-book as seek information among those errors and extravagancies of antiquity which Vartomannus brought to a climax.