scrimmage his hat fell off. A fellow ran to the
bungalow, where he had left his " ladye fair,"
awaiting his return in triumph, and announced
the death of the elephant, adding, that he had
knocked the master's hat off. The " appoo," or
butler, in his interpretation, proclaimed that he
had knocked the master's head off.

Two gentlemen were not long since out on an
elephant-shooting expedition in which they had
been rather successful. On their way home, one
of them encountered an elephant; he fired and
wounded him, on which the elephant charged.
The gentleman ran for it, but his adversary
overtook him; he fell, and the elephant stood over
him. The gentleman had all his wits about him,
and had time to ask himself, as he lay there,
whether it was more likely that he would be
pounded into a jelly, torn into pieces, tossed into
the air, or kicked about like a ball. As he could
not come to a satisfactory solution, he looked
up at the elephant as if to judge from the
expression of his countenance what were his
intentions; when he perceived that the elephant
was "dazed." The ball in his forehead had
evidently confused his intellects, and he did not
quite know what to do. At this juncture one
of the sportsman's attendants came up and drew
off the creature.

When an elephant is killed, all the carnivorous
beasts of the field, and birds of the air, come
together to feed on his remains; among others,
the wild boar. A gentleman was one day looking
at the carcase of an elephant which had
been shot some days previously, when he
observed a movement in the body as if it had
been again imbued with life. For a moment he
knew not what to make of this resuscitation,
but the mystery was soon explained by a wild
pig emerging from within the body of the
elephant, where he had been taking his breakfast,
and scuttling off as hard as he could
run.

Some jugglers paid us a visit (in Ceylon)
recently. Their sleight-of-hand tricks were exceedingly
clever, when it is borne in mind that their
arms and shoulders are entirely uncovered, and
afford no such places for concealment as the
sleeves of a European conjuror. From the
means and appliances which the party brought
with them, I saw they were going to perform
the trick of which so much has been said and
written, of putting a woman into a basket, killing
her with a sword while within, and then
bringing her to life again. I have now twice
seen this feat performed, and confess it has on
neither occasion struck me as being a peculiarly
good one; very possibly I may have seen it
performed by an inferior set of artists. The mode
of operating is doubtless the same with all
jugglers. A man orders a woman to make a
salaam to a lady or gentleman looking on, or
to do something or other, and she refuses, then
an altercation begins, and at last he seizes her,
and ties her up in a net; he then gives her
another chance of obeying his behest, and, on
her refusal, he pretends to be very angry, and
sticks her into a wicker basket, and ties down
the lid; he then calls out to her, and she replies
from within; he asks her if she will do what
she is told to do; she still refuses; thereupon
he seizes a sword and sticks it in every direction
into the basket; he then calls again, but there
issues no answer; he kicks the basket, and it
rolls along as if empty. He affects surprise,
opens the lid, and draws out the net in which
the woman had lain; all the knots are unfastened.
Then, after a while, the spectators hear a voice
behind them, and, on looking round, there stands
the woman smiling, and she makes her salaam
voluntarily, or else she comes running from a
distance. Now for the solution. The bodies
of all Asiatics are pliable to a degree we cannot
conceive without having seen it. On this very
occasion these jugglers took a small child of
about three years old, and laid it across a sort
of crutch, on its back, and such was the
pliability of its spine that it hung with its head
and feet dangling on each side, as it would have
done had it been laid across the crutch on its
stomach. This being the case, it would not
be at all difficult for a woman, accustomed to
the trick from her youth, to coil herself up in a
corner of the basket in such a way that the
sword, when thrust in, would not touch her, and,
by preconcerted arrangement, she would quietly
move about, so that she was always at the
opposite side to the place where the thrust was
next to be made. Meanwhile, she would untie
the net. When the lid was opened she would
lie in a corner, and by practice would manage
so, that when the basket was kicked she would
assist in rolling it along as if empty.

But now comes the difficult part. How does
she get out and come behind the spectators?
It is on this that narrators have laid so much
stress. They have said that such have been
the attendant circumstances, that she could not
have left the basket without their seeing her, or
passing through a crowd of eager watchers.
This is very likely, and possibly she does not
leave the basket at the time. Perhaps the
following may be the solution: It is not so easy
to distinguish the features of Asiatics as of
Europeans, and the mode of partially veiling
the face and of arranging the drapery is such,
that if two sisters bearing a strong resemblance
to each other were to dress exactly alike, and
wear the same kind of bangles, ankle ornaments,
hair pins, and nose jewels, bystanders whose
scrutiny had not been particularly directed in
that channel, might very readily mistake the
one sister for the other, and so, while looking
intently at the basket, the sister who had not
gone into it might slip up from some place a
short way off, and lead spectators to believe she
was the one who had been apparently killed in
the basket. The jugglers to whom I now
specially allude adopted a very clumsy contrivance.
After the woman was "kilt and murthered
entirely," they surrounded the basket with some
canvas as a screen. I observed that one man was
watching my eye very keenly; his part evidently
was, to give a signal when my attention was
diverted. Another man then asked us to see what