Were there similar scenes in Europe wherever
the remains of elephants are found?

Wherever droves of elephants have been seen,
flocks of birds have been observed hovering
around them, and alighting upon their backs to
pick parasites out of their wool. The author of
Wild Sports of the World—with whom I leave
the responsibility of his statements—says, that
although elephants are met in friendly herds,
they part, on the approach of danger, into
family squads or parties, which are distinguishable
by traits of family likeness, each
patriarch or chief sounding his trumpet, and calling
off his clan. The elderly members of the
tribe keep a sharp look-out upon the young
sweethearting bucks, not one of whom dare
bring home the object of his choice without
the previous consent of the majority of his
relations. Transgressors against the will of the
tribe, in Athenian phrase, are ostracised; or, in
the vernacular of Pall-Mall, black-balled. And
the martyr is called by the Bengalese a "sawn,"
or "goondah," and by the Ceylonese a "hora,"
but, no matter what the name may be, it always
means a rogue. If a rogue dare to approach
any tribe whatever, he is driven off by a charge
of tusks.

A very remarkable thing respecting the
elephant, is his sensibility to music. Under the
power of music, the ancients could make him
perform upon the tight rope. There have been
Blondin elephants. During the eighteenth
century, when it was the fashion to disbelieve everything asserted by ancient writers, such as Ælian,
Pliny, and Herodotus, the stories told of the
musical elephants began to be discredited, and
they are still read and repeated with a certain
amount of incredulity. The ancients evidently
carried the art of training elephants to a
perfection never dreamed of among the moderns.
Elephants have been exhibited in London
marching in procession, kneeling down when
bidden by a wave of the hand, placing a hand
upon "the head of the true prince," firing off
pistols, and the like; but the feats they
performed at Rome were far more remarkable.
Elephants were bred at Rome. And they were
trained by means of kindness and music. The
dread inspired by the clash of cymbals was
overcome gradually, until it disappeared
altogether. From the gentle notes of flutes they
derived such pleasure that they would express
their satisfaction by beating time to the tunes
with their feet. Twelve elephants were taught
to march into a theatre to an harmonious
measure, sometimes in a circle, and sometimes
divided into parties, scattering flowers around
them all the while. Preserving their proper
order, they would beat time to the music during
the intervals of the dance. Being provided
with splendid couches, adorned with paintings
and tapestry, and a banquet spread before them
upon tables of cedar and ivory, the elephants,
in the costumes of male and female personages of
distinction, would dine decorously: not one of
them voraciously taking an undue share of the
delicacies, and all drinking moderately out of cups
of silver and gold. Germanicus, according to
Pliny, exhibited elephants hurling and catching
javelins, fighting with each other, and executing
the Pyrrhic dance. And it was through their
love of music that elephants were trained to
dance upon ropes. Four of them walked along
a rope or ropes, carrying a litter, containing a
fifth, which was feigning sickness. Many writers
confirm the testimony of Pliny to the fact that
the elephants walked backwards and forwards
upon the ropes with equal precision. Seneca,
in his Epistles, describes an elephant who, at
the command of his keeper, would not merely
walk, but would kneel down upon a rope.
Suetonius describes an elephant who, in the
presence of the Emperor Galba, climbed up an
inclined rope to the roof of a theatre, and
descended in the same way, bearing a sitter upon
his back. Arrian mentions an elephant who
performed as a musician to his dancing
comrades. With a cymbal fastened to each of his
knees, and a third to his trunk, he would beat
a measure with astonishing precision and
accuracy; while the other elephants danced in a
circle round him.

The scepticism with which these stories
have been viewed can only be dissipated
completely, by repetitions of similar performances
in modern times; but the study of the structure
of the ear of the elephant, and experiments
made both in London and Paris, leave
little doubt upon the mind that the
performances of the ancient elephants might be
repeated by the modern elephants. When
compared with the ear of man and other mammals,
the drum of the ear of the elephant presents
remarkable differences. In the human ear the
muscular fibres of the drum are radii of a circle,
and in the horse, hare, and cat, they are of uniform
length; but in the elephant some of them
are more than double the length of the others. The
vibrations of these long fibres being slower, the
elephant is enabled to hear sounds from a great
distance. Sir Everard Home says: "As a
matter of curiosity, I got Mr. Broadwood to
send one of his timers to the menagerie of
Exeter Change, that I might know the effects of
acute and grave sounds upon the elephant.
The acute sounds seemed hardly to attract his
notice, but as soon as the grave notes were
struck he became all attention, brought forward
the large external ear, tried to discover where
the sounds came from, and made noises by no
means of dissatisfaction. Mr. Cross observed
that the elephant showed by expressive signs
that she could hear the sounds of the hoofs of a
horse behind her, and the plaintive cries of her
young one, when these sounds were inaudible
to human ears. This acuteness of hearing
enables the elephants to hear each other when
feeding far apart among the brushwood, and the
compass of their voices ranging from the shrill
notes of the trunk to the deep growls of the
throat or chest, is fitted for conveying every
feeling, whether of pleasure or of anger."

But whilst admitting that elephants could
hear from a great distance, Sir Everard Home