The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    thusiasm of the musician had something’ to do with the assertion, that the tender air of charmante Gabrielle plunged them into a species of voluptuous languor, and that the lively movement of pa ira roused them to an extraordinary state of excitement. The whole narrative certainly adds some confirmation to the account which iElian gives of the modulated dance of the elephants of Germanicus. We have seen that the elephant rarely uses his trunk as a weapon. But nature has given him most formidable means for resisting his enemies. His tusks, or, as the French naturalists more properly call them, his defenses, enable him not only to clear his way through the thick forests in which he lives, by rooting up small trees and tearing down cross branches, in doing which service they effectually pro- tect his face and proboscis from injury; but they qualify him for warding off the attacks of the wily tiger and the furious rhinoceros, often securing him the victory by one blow which transfixes the assailant to the earth. At particular seasons, when the pas- sions of the male elephant are furiously excited, the more powerful of the herd will wound or destroy the weaker with their tusks. Mr. Corse thus saw a stately male elephant gore two small elephants, in the midst of the herd, in a terrific manner. “ When the poor animals were thrown down, conscious of their impend- ing fate, they roared most piteously; but notwith- standing their prostrate situation and submissive cries, he unfeelingly and deliberately drove his tusks through, and transfixed them to the ground*.” Large male elephants, which in Hindostan are called goondahs, are often found wandering from the herd; and the natives believe that they are driven from the community as a punishment for their ferocious ex*- cesses, Mr. Corse, however, doubts this; and he * PiuJ.Traus, 17?9V