to assemble at a given point with great rapidity.
In passing from mountain to mountain, through
thick woods hiding a river, they will take the
direct line by which the river may be crossed
at the point where it is most fordable. Engineers
in Ceylon recognise this fact, and are guided by
the elephant tracks in planning ways for human
traffic.

The voice of the elephant has been described
by hunters as having three cries. A quiet study
of him in his undisturbed home life shows that
his variety of utterance is very great. A shrill
blowing through the trunk, in some treatises
described as a cry of pleasure, is, in Ceylon at
any rate, the cry of rage and defiance. Trunk
is a word derived from the French trompe, and
means the trumpet; in old illustrations an
elephant may be seen pictured having the end
of his trunk trumpet shaped. A groan from the
throat expresses suffering.  A twitter with the
lips, defined by the word "prut," is the low word
of alarm which elephants pass from one to
another when anything unusual appears in the
forest. A night alarm that hurries them beyond
this note of caution excites them to produce a
booming like the sound of an empty tun struck
with a mallet.  One observer believes this noise
to be made by the elephant's beating on his side
with his proboscis.  Another gentleman has seen
the sound produced by striking the ground
forcibly with the point of the trunk, which is
then raised and pushed in the direction of the
threatened danger, as if to detect its nature by
the sense of smell.  When this sound is heard
in the woods, bellowing and trumpeting are
usually mingled with it.

Again, it is remarkable that while an elephant
disturbed in the jungle will burst away with a
rush that seems to bear all down before him,
the noise often sinks rapidly into absolute
stillness, and the animal steals quietly away,
carrying his enormous weight without a sound,
and almost without leaving the trace of disturbed
foliage behind.

Eight or nine feet is the full height of a
Ceylon elephant, and the African elephant does
not become much taller; although the impression
of much greater height is usually given by the
unusual bulk and stature.  There was an old
fable, long believed, that the elephant having
no joints in his leg slept leaning against a tree.
Of course he has joints, those of the hind leg
bending as the legs of a man do, but the straight
arrangement of the solid bones makes the four
legs very complete pillars of support.  An
elephant sleeps with nearly as much ease standing
as reclining, and when tamed will perhaps
sleep standing for months together.  When free
in his woods, he may be sometimes come upon
asleep after the manner described in old fable,
propped upright against a rock or tree.
Elephants play in the night, and in the daytime
often are so tired and sleepy that they will go
to sleep while rubbing themselves against a rock
or tree.  Our poets have not forgotten to apply
the notion of a mighty animal whose "legs are
for necessity, not flexure."  So firm are the
pillars of this creature's legs, that it will die on
its feet, and when dead remain standing.

But this strength does not make them less
available for active use. It is still commonly
supposed, as was taught in the book on
Menageries, published by the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge, that an elephant's legs
are "formed more for strength than flexibility,
and fitted to bear an enormous weight upon a
level surface, without the necessity of ascending
or descending great acclivities."  The truth is,
that he is a famous climber.  Wherever the
hardiest man can pull himself up or let himself
down, the elephant can go, if there be only
space to admit his bulk, and strength of ground
to bear his weight.  The human flexure of his
hind legs enables him in descending precipices
to drag them cautiously after him, and bring
them slowly under him.  With his fore legs he
dexterously breaks for himself as he goes, the
footing that he does not find.  Upon the summit
of Adam's Peak, not easily climbed by man's foot,
the elephant has left his track.  In fact, as before
said, he prefers the higher mountain soil. This
is as true of the elephant of India as in Ceylon.

A herd of elephants is a family, not an
accidental group of friends. The family likeness
usually may be seen in it.  A like peculiarity of
the trunk, it may be, or one colour in all the
eyes, or a resemblance in the slope or form of
back or forehead.  Herds will meet and unite at
the pools in bodies of perhaps one or two
hundred, but, in separating, each holds to his own.
A herd usually contains ten or twenty individuals,
and there is little variation in its number.
Females form its majority, and the young of the
herd are cared for by all its females, not alone
by the mother.  An elephant separated from its
herd by any accident, or loss of its mate, is not
allowed to join another, becomes solitary, and
more or less vicious.  Such an elephant, almost
universally male, is called in Ceylon a hora, or
rogue, and is a greater object of terror to the
natives than a hundred wild elephants in their
ordinary state. The rogue elephants haunt and
destroy plantations, lose their fear of man, and
have even been known to carry off a sheaf of
rice from the midst of the reapers.  Wild elephants
in the herd respect to a very singular degree
cultivated fields. The lightest fence excludes
them.  Round a tank frequented at night by
great numbers of them rice was sown in the
mud, in small fields thinly fenced, with passages
between for the wild elephants who came down
to the water. There was never a fence broken
or a mouthful of rice stolen, although after the
harvest they all eagerly took possession of the
ground as gleaners. The elephants will travel
far on gleaning expeditions, but to the crop of
which they take the leavings with so great a
relish they will do no hurt whatever.

An officer in Ceylon, Major Skinner, was
engaged in surveying and opening roads in the
great central forest towards the north of the
island.  In the dry season he encamped by a
small tank, the only pond within many miles, to
which of necessity a very large herd of