The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-05-28

they can walk away with u gun upon their back, and traverse country, so burdened, which would be inaccessible to horse or field artillery. The elephants stand to attention" stand at ease" and salute" as we'll as any Tommy" in the army. They salute" by raising their trunks in the air and keeping them there the required time. Every Maharajah of any consequence in India owns his state" elephant or elephants; and these creatures are like the Queens cream-colored ponies-chiefy kept for purposes of display. Dressed in scarlet and gold, freely decorated with precious stones and often carrying howdah of solid, glstening silver, they make very brave show indeed and add great 1 ly to the opulence and picturesqueness of Oriental processions and festivals. The elephant is used largely in the jun gle for purpose of sport; and whether engaged In hunting their own untamed brethen or the fierce tiger they are 1 found highly useful and intelligent. The wild elephants, singularly enough, do not attack the tame ones which go l llltO lHG JullSlG dllCI JIlGillg pul NIltll the tiger is followed he frequently turns upon the elephant, and is in turn at tackled by the latter with his tusks, goring and pinning to the earth his ferocious foe.
 As a beast of burden the elephant is very largely employed in India, Bur nah, Ceylon, Sumatra and southeastern Asia, and as such it is found to be pa- tient, intelligent, industrious and most | effective. The average elephant will walk away" with load of half a ton as though unburdened. In Burmah I they are employed for dragging logs up from the river and stacking them in well-regulated piles on the bank Thus they do with human precision, and butt away at the end of a log until 1t is flush with the pile, with an intelligence that 1 is almost startling. Tn Perak they use them for carrying loads of tin from the mines; in India they are employed for | bearing miscellaneous burdens, and, of | course, their great strength is often em- | ployed for removing obstacles beyond ordinary horse power. As a rule, horses are afraid of them, and I remem- Der once, while riding from Dagshai to Sinla, having to blindfold my horse be- fore l could get him to pass three or four stately elephants. It was, of course, at a particularly nasty bit of road, where tumble over the ghat would have ended my sublunary tolls. The elephant Is, as have said, kind and gentle. It returns love for love. In the jungle, when free, they live in herds and are very much attached to each other, The monarch of the herd is an arch polygamist, and admits of no ri- valry fighting to the death," if need be- in defence of his harem.
 Like the buffalo of North America, and the Indian rupee, the elephant is a vanishing quantity" In Africa ele- plants are ruthlessly slaughtered for | their ivory In India they are sue cumbing before the advance of civiliza- | ton. The Indian and African ele- i plants differ in few points. Thus, while the ear of the Indian elephant is only moderate in size, that of the Afri- can is three and ofe-half feet long by
 two and one-half feet broad; the 1ndi- an elephant has fo1r or five nails on it's hind feet, the African only three, while the African averages a full foot taller than the Indian. In intellectual quail ty they offer but slight contrast, the
 balance, if any heing in favor of the Indian. In each case they live ire quently to one hundred and twenty o1 one hundred and thirty years, though
 the average is, I believe about eighty years, The weight of a full-grown male is between three and four tons, and a large 'tusker3ss will eat more than half 3 ton of green fodder in twenty foul 1 hours. They use their trunks in gath ering leaves of the palm, fig and jak
 trees, and also as a sort of fire hose tc squirt streams of water over their bod ies in the intense heat and to drive trou-
 blesome insects away.-St James Bud