The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-08-14 00:00:00

THE INDIAN ELEPHANT.

Just before the last mail left Mr. Sanderson
delivered before the Viceroy and a distinguished
audience at Simla an interesting lecture on the history
of the elephant (says the Globe). The usually re-
ceived notions of the elephant's height are much
exaggerated. Out of many hundreds which Mr.
Sanderson measured in the south of India and Bengal
he only found one male of 9ft. 10in, vertical height at
the shoulder; though the Rajah of Nahun has at pre-
sent a tusker which measures 10ft. Min.
Few female elephants attain Bft. at the shoulder,
though Mr. Sanderson has seen one of Bft. sin. Twice
round an elephant's forefoot gives his height to within
an inch or two.

As regards age, looking to their peculiar dentition
and other circumstances, Mr. Sanderson thinks it by no
means improbable that elephants live to 150 or 200
years. There seems to be somewhat the same mystery
about dead elephants as about dead donkeys. No one
has ever, apparently, seen the remains of a dead ele-
phant, and this circumstance is so marked as to have
given rise to the belief among some wild tribes that
wild elephants never die; whilst others believe that there
is a place unseen by human eyes to which they retire to
end their days. In Mr. Sanderson's wanderings for
years through elephant jungles he has not only never
seen the remains of an elephant that had died a
natural death, but he has never met any one among
the jungle tribes or professional hunters who had.
The Cingalese have a superstition that on feeling the
approach of dissolution the elephant retires to a soli-
tary valley and there resigns himself to death. There
is a similar belief in India, but Mr. Sanderson shows
that it is untenable.

One would not expect to hear that elephants are
expert swimmers, though they can no more jump a
trench eight feet wide than they dance a hornpipe.
Such, however, seems to be the case from the fact that
large numbers of them are annually sent across the
tideway of the Ganges between Dacca and Barrack-
pore, and are sometimes six consecutive hours without
touching the bottom. Mr. Sanderson has seen an
elephant swim a river 300 yards wide with his hind
legs tied together. They are sometimes drowned,
a uparently by being attacked with cramps or with
,a
fit.

The belief that wild elephants have decreased in
India is shown by Mr. Sanderson to be incorrect.
The records of the past fifty years attest that there is
no diminution in the numbers now obtainable in
Bengal, whilst in Southern India elephants have be-
come so numerous of late years that they are annually
appearing in places where they had never been heard
of before. In fact, Mr. Sanderson thinks that unless
something be done, the rifle will have to be used to
protect the ryots of tracts bordering upon elephant
jungles. To give an idea of the number of wild
elephants in some parts of India, the lecturer stated
that during the past three years 503 elephants have
been captured by the Dacca Kheddah establishment
in a tract of country forty miles long by twenty broad
in the Garo Hills, whilst not less than 1,000 were met
with during the hunting operations. Mr. Sanderson
does not think there is any danger of the elephant
becoming extinct in India. He also considers that by
proper restrictions in the method of, and greater faci-
lities for, hunting, the cost of elephants to Govern-
ment might be considerably reduced.
The lecturer gave a graphic description of the dif-
ferent modes of capturing and training the elephant.
Here is an extract :—" When an elephant chases the
men they betake themselves to the shelter of tree
trunks, bamboo clumps, or long grass, and it is
astonishing to see how they frequently escape un.in-
jurTd. I have known many cases of men standing
against a tree, or hiding in tufts of long grass within
a couple of yards of elephants that were pausing in
indecision, without being discovered, though the ele-
phants were evidently aware of their close proximity,
as they kicked up the ground in anger and then made
off. in such cases the slightest movement would have
led to the hunters being instantly trampled to death.
Men are frequently killed, of course, but they are
almost always young hands who are learning. I saw
one such make a narrow escape a few months ago. He
ran from an elvphant and climbed a tree; the ele-
phant butted the trunk and the man fell down, but
his pursuer was so astonished at the sight that she
fled at once. Sometimes drives are conducted by
torchlight, and these seldom fail, owing to the ele-
phants' fear of fire. The scenes on these occasions are
exciting beyond description."