large
blocks of stone. It is most curious to observe the way in which one
will take up a huge log of timber in his trunk and carry it through a
narrow road, turning it longways when there is not width to allow it to
pass, and avoiding all impediments, and finally placing log after log on
the pile with the greatest regularity. This he will do without any
driver to guide his movements, and directed entirely by his own
sagacity.

From what I could learn, the average age of elephants is about seventy
years, though some have been known to have lived twice as long; and one
elephant, who only lately died, and whose skeleton, I have heard, in in
the Museum of Natural History at Belfast, was successively in the
service of the Dutch and English Governments--certainly for upwards of a
century. Probably he was a hundred and twenty years old at least. The
natives believe that elephants bury their own dead. Certain it is that
they remove them from any spot which they are accustomed to frequent,
shoving their bodies on with their heads or tusks, or dragging them with
their trunks. Others believe that elephants select some remote and
sequestered spot by the side of a lake surrounded by mountains, and
thither they resort when they feel their death approaching, that they
may lie down and die tranquilly. The popular belief, however, is that
they live to an almost illimitable age when in a state of freedom; and
that is the reason why their dead bodies are seldom or never found,
unless they have met their death from the sportsman's rifle.

An elephant requires three men to attend to him. One is his mahout or
attendant, and two, as leaf-cutters, to supply him with food; so that
the cost of his keep is upwards of three shillings a-day. The elephants
of Ceylon have sometimes, but not often, tusks, while those of Africa
are generally supplied with them. So peaceable and amiable are their
dispositions, that they are provided with no other weapon of offence;
for the trunk, though powerful, is too delicate an organ to be used
willingly for the attack of other animals, except in cases of necessity.
Indeed, he has no enemies who venture to attack him except man; and of
late years, in consequence of the wide distribution of firearms among
the natives, and the great number of English sportsmen who have invaded
the country, their numbers have greatly diminished.

I heard of one Englishman having killed upwards of a thousand of those
noble