Читать книгу Those Other Animals - G. A. Henty - Страница 3

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IT must be admitted that it is hard upon the citizens of the United States that the elephant is not found in the Western Continent. The Americans have an especial fondness for big things. They are proud that they possess the biggest Continent, the largest rivers, the longest railways, the loftiest trees, the most monster hotels, and the tallest stories of any people in the world. It is, then, extremely hard upon them that they have not also the biggest quadrupeds. Two good-sized quadrupeds, indeed, they had—the bison and the moose—but they are fast disappearing. As they were not the very biggest, the citizens of the States had no interest in preserving them. Had the elephant been there, he would, doubtless, have been religiously protected as a subject of national glorification. The elephant is not thought so much of in the countries where he resides. In India he has been utilised, but in Africa is prized only for his flesh and his tusks. He is considered to be a highly intelligent animal, and in books for children is generally spoken of as the sagacious elephant; but in proportion to his size he is rather a poor creature in the way of intelligence, and the brain of the ant, tiny as it is, contains more real thinking power than the skull of the elephant.

It can hardly be doubted that he owes much of the respect in which he is held by man to the peculiar formation of his proboscis. A large nose is generally considered as a sign of ability in man, but even the largest human nose is, since the change of fashion abolished its usefulness as a snuff-box, incapable of any other function than that of an organ of smell, and as a convenient support for a pair of spectacles. It is practically fixed and immovable, at least for all purposes save that of expressing the emotions of scorn and disdain. Man has, then, never recovered from the astonishment and admiration experienced by the first discoverer of the elephant at finding a beast capable of using his nose as a hand—of conveying his food to his mouth with it, and of utilising it in all the various work of life. This peculiarity has been more than sufficient to counterbalance the many obvious defects in the appearance of the elephant—his little pig-like eyes, his great flat ears, his short and stumpy tail, and the general hairless condition of his leathern skin. Then, too, mankind, even in the present day of advanced education, are worshippers of brute strength, as is evidenced by the attraction of the feats performed by strong men; and the elephant possesses enormous strength. This, however, is positive rather than relative, for he is a poor creature indeed in comparison with the flea, or even with the beetle, both of which can move weights enormously exceeding their own. Even the donkey could, bulk for bulk, give the elephant points.

The elephant is but a chicken-hearted beast. In spite of his size and strength he is easily scared, and a hare starting up at his feet has been frequently known to have excited in him an uncontrollable panic. Now and then one can be trained to await quietly the charge of an angry tiger; but this is rather because of the confidence that the animal feels in the shooting of the men he carries than in his own powers, and after having been once mauled he can seldom be induced to repeat the experiment. Naturally, the elephant is timid in the extreme; the slightest noise startles him, and, except in the case of a solitary bull rendered morose by being driven from the herd by younger rivals, he will seldom unless wounded face man. He is, like most animals, capable of being taught something; but when it is considered that he lives a hundred years, while the dog lives but ten or twelve, he would be stupid indeed if he did not in all that time come to some understanding as to what was required of him; but even at his best, a well-trained dog is a vastly more intelligent animal. This, indeed, might only be expected, for the elephant’s brain is smaller in proportion to its bulk than is that of almost any other creature, being little larger than that of man; and while the brain in man is of about one-twenty-fifth of the size of the body, that of the elephant is but one-five-hundredth part. We should, therefore, pity rather than blame the creature for the smallness of his capacity. It may be said that Baron Cuvier, who made the habits of the elephant a subject of attentive study, came to the conclusion that at the best he was no more intelligent than a dog.

The elephant should have been admired by Dr. Johnson on the ground that he is a good hater. Although his brain is not capable of holding many ideas, his memory of an injury is particularly retentive, and if he has to wait for years, he will get even at last with any one who has played him a trick. In old times the elephant was trained to war. Gunpowder had not been invented, and the elephant was therefore practically invulnerable; but even then his utility was problematical, and if pricked by an arrow or javelin, he was as likely as not to turn tail, and to spread confusion and death in the ranks of the troops that marched behind him. His courage, in fact, is beyond all comparison less than that of the horse, who seems to enjoy the clamour of battle, and will carry his rider unflinchingly through the heaviest fire. As a beast of burden the elephant has his uses, and in countries impassable to wheeled vehicles he is very valuable, especially in the carriage of pieces of artillery that could not be transported by any other available means. Upon a level road, however, he possesses no advantage whatever over smaller animals, which will not only drag larger weights in proportion to the food they consume, but will do so at much greater speed.

The elephant, in fact, appears to have been built up with a single eye to his own advantages, and altogether without reference to the use he might be to man. He is admirably fitted for sustaining the struggle for existence. The mechanism of his feet is such as to sustain to a nicety his enormous weight. His thick skin enables him to push his way through the thickest and thorniest jungles with impunity, and his flat ears closely set to his head also facilitate his passage. The great strength and pliability of his prehensile trunk, with its finger-like termination, enables him either to break off the massive limb of a tree or to pick up the smallest tuft of herbage. By its power of suction he can pour volumes of water down his throat, or cool himself by spurting it over his coat of mail. In his natural state, before man appeared upon the scene, he had few enemies, and it was therefore unnecessary to cultivate the attribute of courage. His bulk imposed upon smaller though fiercer creatures, and his thickness of skin protected him from their assaults. As for intelligence, he needed but a small degree of it,—his food lay everywhere within his reach, and he had no occasion for either craft or speed in obtaining it. He was a huge perambulating machine for the conversion of vegetable matter into flesh, and as such he performed his functions admirably, and had no occasion to look further. In his progress, in fact, from the germ up to the elephant he steadily devoted himself to purely selfish ends. Courage was unnecessary, because he intended to be so large and so armour-clad that none would assault him, while, as he had no relish for flesh, he had no need for courage to assault or for speed to pursue others. It was useless to be intelligent, since for him there was no occasion either to hide or to seek. He had but to stretch out his trunk to procure abundant sustenance, and more brain than was needed for this would be but lumber. His digestive organs, on the other hand, were to be upon the largest scale, so as to permit him to enjoy the pleasure of constant and prodigious feeding. These points must have been steadily kept in view during the whole upward progress of the creature, and it is but due to it to say that they were crowned by perfect success. The elephant was a world to himself—not a very lovable, or intelligent, or courageous one, but sufficient in all respects for his own wants and desires; and it would be hard to blame him because he has not devoted himself to the cultivation of qualities that, although admirable in our eyes, would have been wholly useless to him in the career that he had marked out for himself.