Footnote 831: [(return)]
This peculiarity was noticed by the ancients, and is recorded by Herodotus: [Greek: "kamêlon hippos phobeetai, kai ouk anechetai oute tên ideên autês oreôn oute tên odmên osphrainomenos">[ (Herod. ch. 80). Camels have long been bred by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, at his establishment near Pisa, and even there the same instinctive dislike to them is manifested by the horse, which it is necessary to train and accustom to their presence in order to avoid accidents. Mr. BRODERIP mentions, that, "when the precaution of such training has not been adopted, the sudden and dangerous terror with which a horse is seized in coming unexpectedly upon one of them is excessive."—Note-book of a Naturalist, ch. iv. p. 113.
Footnote 841: [(return)]
Major ROGERS was many years the chief civil officer of Government in the district of Oovah, where he was killed by lightning, 1845.
Footnote 842: [(return)]
"Quidam etiam cum equis silvestribus pugnant. Sæpe unus elephas cum sex equis committitur; atque ipse adeo interfui cum unus elephas duos equos cum primo impetu protinus prosternerit;—injecta enim jugulis ipsorum longa proboscide, ad se protractos, dentibus porro comminuit ac protrivit." Angli Cujusdam in Cambayam Navigatio. DE BRY, Coll., &c., vol. iii. ch. xvi. p. 31.
Footnote 843: [(return)]
To account for the impatience manifested by the elephant at the presence of a dog, it has been suggested that he is alarmed lest the latter should attack his feet, a portion of his body of which the elephant is peculiarly careful. A tame elephant has been observed to regard with indifference a spear directed towards his head, but to shrink timidly from the same weapon when pointed at his foot.
Footnote 861: [(return)]
A writer in the India Sporting Review for October 1857 says a male elephant was killed by two others close to his camp: "the head was completely smashed in; there was a large hole in the side, and the abdomen was ripped open. The latter wound was given probably after it had fallen."—P. 175.
Footnote 871: [(return)]
In the Third Book of Maccabees, which is not printed in our Apocrypha, but appears in the series in the Greek Septuagint, the author, in describing the persecution of the Jews by Ptolemy Philopater, B.C. 210, states that the king swore vehemently that he would send them into the other world, "foully trampled to death by the knees and feet of elephants" ([Greek: pempsein eis hadên en gonasi kai posi thêrion hêkismenous.] 3 Mac. v. 42). ÆLIAN makes the remark, that elephants on such occasions use their knees as well as their feet to crush their victims.—Hist Anim. viii. 10.
Footnote 872: [(return)]
The Hastisilpe, a Singhalese work which treats of the "Science of Elephants," enumerates amongst those which it is not desirable to possess, "the elephant which will fight with a stone or a stick in his trunk."
Footnote 881: [(return)]
Among other eccentric forms, an elephant was seen in 1844, in the district of Bintenne, near Friar's-Hood Mountain, one of whose tusks was so bent that it took what sailors term a "round turn," and resumed its curved direction as before. In the Museum of the College of Surgeons, London, there is a specimen, No. 2757, of a spira tusk.
Footnote 882: [(return)]
Since the foregoing remarks were written relative to the undefined use of tusks to the elephant, I have seen a speculation on the same subject in Dr. HOLLAND'S "Constitution of the Animal Creation, as expressed in structural Appendages;" but the conjecture of the author leaves the problem scarcely less obscure than before. Struck with the mere supplemental presence of the tusks, the absence of all apparent use serving to distinguish them from the essential organs of the creature, Dr. HOLLAND concludes that their production is a process incident, but not ancillary, to other important ends, especially connected with the vital functions of the trunk and the marvellous motive powers inherent to it; his conjecture is, that they are "a species of safety valve of the animal oeconomy,"—and that "they owe their development to the predominance of the senses of touch and smell, conjointly with the muscular motions of which the exercise of these is accompanied." "Had there been no proboscis," he thinks, "there would have been no supplementary appendages,—the former creates the latter."—Pp. 246, 271.
Footnote 901: [(return)]
See Chapter on Mammalia, p. 60.