the error, in the next generation, "from some strings of tradition;" for he argues, that as this was not the first elephant that had been seen in England, the effect of the truth might wear away, as it had before yielded to vulgar prejudice. It is quite clear, both from the general tone in which this writer mentions the subject, and from the particular facts upon record, that elephants were scarcely known in Europe as recently as the middle of the seventeenth century. Lewis IX. of France, indeed, sent an elephant to our Henry III., which was probably procured from some of the African chiefs, at the period when the French king invaded Palestine by the way of Egypt. This elephant was kept in the Tower of London; and with somewhat more of comfort to himself, as to the space in which he was confined, than the pent-up animals of our modern menageries: for the king, in a precept to the sheriff of London, in 1256, says, we command you, that, of the farm of our city, ye cause, without delay, to be built at our Tower of London, one house of forty feet long, and twenty feet deep, for our elephant*" Emanuel of Portugal, also, sent a remarkable elephant to Pope Leo X., which was exhibited at Rome; and Cardan, about the same period (the beginning of the sixteenth century), describes an elephant which he had seen at the court of the Queen of Bohemia, the daughter of the Emperor Charles V. With the additional exception of an elephant, which was sent to Charlemagne, in the year 802, by Haroun Al Raschid, caliph of the Saracens, there is no account of the animal being brought to Europe, after the time when the early Byzantine monarchs, in imitation of the princes who reigned before the division of the Roman empire, exhibited him to the people in the cruel sports of the Circus. * Maitland's London, vol. i. p. 171.-Edit. 1772.

Physicæ Curiosæ, p. 1024,

Even in the time of Justinian (A. D. 527), the elephant was rarely shewn either at Rome or Constantinople *.

During the middle ages, little or nothing was known of the elephant, except through the inaccurate representations of the animal upon medals. The figure of the elephant was used, too, in heraldry, with a tower on his back. When the arts were little practised in England the representation was rude enough; as may be seen on an ancient plate in St. Mary's Hall, at Coventry: and, probably, from this inaccuracy of form, the multitude, with the common disposition to burlesque, converted the "Elephant and Castle" into "the Pig and Whistle." Up to the time of the revival of letters, and indeed till the end of the sixteenth century, the people of Italy, whose ancestors had been so familiar with this quadruped, accounted all that was said about his sagacity as a fable, and had no idea of his form, except as to its vastness †. But the growing intercourse of the moderns with distant countries, and the spirit of curiosity which more particularly belongs to commercial nations, gradually rendered the elephant a somewhat common object in most large collections of foreign animals—at least after the Portuguese had penetrated to the interior of Africa, and the discovery of the passage to India had gradually led to the establishment of European settlements in the East. In this way the French king had an elephant at Versailles, which came from Congo, and which died in 1681. Thamas Kouli Khan, in 1741, sent

*See Cuper de Elephantis; in Novus Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanorum, congestus ab. A. H. de Sallengre, t. iii. p. 248.1719.

† Pierius, Hierogl. lib. ii. cap. 18; quoted in Sallengre.

Perrault, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire Naturelle des Animaux, tom. ii. p. 503.

fourteen as a present to the Czar of Russia*; and they have become so easy of attainment in England, that we may readily believe an anecdote told regarding the elephant which lately died at Chiswick,-that the Duke of Devonshire, having been asked by a lady of rank what she should send him from India, and having laughingly answered, "Oh, nothing smaller than an elephant," was surprised to find, at the expiration of some months, a very handsome female of the species consigned to his care.

The Duke of Devonshire's elephant was kept at his grace's villa at Chiswick, under circumstances peculiarly favourable to its health and docility. The house in which she was shut up was of large dimensions, well ventilated, and arranged in every particular with a proper regard to the comfort of the animal. But she often had the range of a spacious paddock; and the exhibition of her sagacity was therefore doubly pleasing, for it was evidently not effected by rigid confinement. At the voice of her keeper she came out of her house, and immediately took up a broom, ready to perform his bidding in sweeping the paths or the grass. She would follow him round the enclosure with a pail or a watering-pot, shewing her readiness to take that share of labour which the elephants of the East are so willing to perform. Her reward was a carrot and some water; but previously to satisfying her thirst by an ample draught, she would exhibit her ingenuity in emptying the contents of a soda-water bottle, which was tightly corked. This she effected in a singularly adroit manner. Pressing the small bottle against the ground with her enormous foot, so as to hold it securely at an angle of about forty-five degrees, she gradually twisted out the cork with her trunk, although it was very little above the edge of the * Lévesque, Histoire de Russie.

neck; then, without altering the position, she turned her trunk round the bottle, so that she might reverse it, and thus empty the water into the extremity of the proboscis. This she accomplished without spilling a drop; and she delivered the empty bottle to her keeper before she attempted to discharge the contents of the trunk into the mouth. She performed another trick which required equal nicety and patience. The keeper, who was accustomed to ride on her neck like the mohouts, or elephant drivers of India, had a large cloth or housing, which he spread over her, when he thus bestrode her in somewhat of oriental state. Upon alighting, which she allowed him to do by kneeling, he desired her to take off the cloth. This she effected by putting the muscles of her loins in action, so that the shrinking of her loose skin gave motion to the cloth, and it gradually wriggled on one side, till it fell by its own weight. The cloth was then, of course, in a heap; but the elephant, spreading it carefully upon the grass with her trunk, folded it up, as a napkin is folded, till it was sufficiently compact for her purpose. She then poised it with her trunk for a few seconds, and by one jerk threw it over her head to the centre of her back, where it remained as steady as if the burden had been adjusted by human hands. The affection of this poor animal for her keeper was very great, The man who had the charge of her in 1828, when we saw her, had attended her for five years, having succeeded another who had been with her eight or ten years. When first placed under his charge, she was intractable for some time, evidently resenting the loss of her former friend; but she gradually became obedient and attached, and would cry after him whenever he was absent for more than a few hours. The elephants of India, in the same way, cannot easily be brought to obey a stranger, and ma

nifest a remarkable knowledge of their old mohouts if they should meet after a long separation*. The elephant of the Duke of Devonshire was about twentyone years old when she died, early in 1829. We have understood that the disease which carried her off was pulmonary consumption.

The inhabitants of London have recently witnessed the dramatic exhibition of an elephant, which has afforded them a more remarkable example of the sagacity of this quadruped than the ordinary docility which it manifests at the command of the showman. The elephant which, in the last winter, attracted crowds to the Adelphi Theatre, was probably not more sagacious than the greater number of her species; but she was well disciplined, and she exhibited her feats with considerable effect, by their adaptation to scenic display. To march in a procession, to kneel down without any more perceptible bidding than the waving of a hand, to salute a particular individual, to place a crown upon the head of "the true prince," to eat and drink with great gravity and propriety of demeanour, and to make her reverence to an audience without any apparent signal, are very striking evidences of the tractability of the creature; but they are by no means of the class of novel exhibitions, and they have been excelled by other performances, of which we have a distinct record. One of the most remarkable narratives of the ancient display of elephants in a theatre, is that of Elian, who has described, in a very lively manner, the extreme docility of the elephants of Germanicus. At that period elephants were bred at Rome-a fact which has been most unaccountably overlooked in the descriptions of modern naturalists, but the practicability of which has received abundant confirmation from recent experience. Great care, according to Ælian, was paid to their health; and * See Williamson's Oriental Field Sports, p.41.