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Christian humility, but also of his unabated faith in the principles of the Training system, based as it was upon the Bible. The Revs. Dr. Buchanan, R. Cunningham (the former rector), Mr. Hislop (the actual rector), and others not directly engaged in educational work, united on this occasion in paying homage to the resolute founder of a system which had already proved itself to be so effective wherever it had been fairly tried. The occasion was one of great interest, and there are some still living to whom it remains a joyful memory.

The 'beautiful character' of Mr. Stow gradually unfolded in the privacy of domestic life does not of necessity come within our purview. But it may be recorded that by his marriage, in 1822, to Miss Marion Freebairn, a young lady of decided piety, highly accomplished, and of great personal attraction,' he was for nine years greatly aided in the work to which he had devoted his life. Mrs. Stow died in 1831. His eldest son, William, having distinguished himself at Cambridge, accepted the vicarage of Avebury, Wilts, and died in April, 1852. The next son, John, died in the following December. In 1841, Mr. Stow was united to Miss Elizabeth MacArthur, whose death took place in 1847. A son and a daughter survived their father.

During the last few years of his life, Mr. Stow was shut out from an active share in the work of the Normal College, and resided chiefly at the Bridge of Allan, occasionally visiting Torquay (1861) and other places to recruit his failing strength. But when he had reached the 'threescore years and ten' he could take but little active interest in educational affairs. His protracted illness resulted in continually increasing feebleness, and limited his visitors to a narrow circle. He constantly referred to his early experiences in the Sabbath-school, and, in reply to any who spoke of the great work done by him, in deep humility he insisted that he had been an unprofitable servant,' but thankfully acknowledged the results which had been developed from such unpromising beginnings. 'On the 6th of November, 1864, the day broke and the shadows fled. In his seventy-first year he finished his career Britain lost in him one of her foremost educationists. He yet lives in the heart and memory of those whom he led to consecrate their energies to the cause of Christian education, and who are now filling spheres of public usefulness in various parts of the world.'

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while, on the other hand, there were quite as many who pointed out Jumbo as one of the Indian elephants.

One morning, however, there appeared in one of the daily newspapers a vivid and dramatic account of an attempt to take Jumbo out of the Gardens, so as to accustom him to the road.

We were told how he suspected a trap, and bewailed his hard lot; how he knelt to his keeper, caressed him, and in all but human words besought for restoration to the home of his childhood. We learned how the other elephants from within their houses responded to his piteous appeal, and how they all rejoiced together when he returned among them.

president, secretary, superintendent, and other officers As by magic, a Jumbo literature sprang up. The of the Society were inundated with letters, mostly composed of vituperative epithets. Even persons

like myself, who have no connection with the Society, but were known to take an interest in animals, received letters from all quarters on the same subject. None of the writers seemed even to conceive the idea that the officers of the Society were likely to understand their own business, and would not part from such an animal without very good reasons for doing so.

Then the Jumbo-worship set in. A Jumbo Rescue Fund was started. Presents of the most fatuous description were showered on the animal. Visiting cards with "farewell were attached to his box, which was simply covered with farewell messages in pencil.

That basket after basket full of hot-house grapes should be given to him we can understand, though the grapes would have been better employed if given to sick poor who needed them, and who would not have eaten the baskets as well as the grapes.

But it is scarcely possible to conceive how many human beings could have been so ignorantly foolish as to present an elephant with several boxes of cigars, packets of snuff, a leg of mutton, and six dozen oysters.

From their nature these gifts seem to have been presented by donors of the male sex. But feminine presents are even more absurd than the masculine. No one, however imaginative, would have thought that a widow's suit should be sent to Alice, to be worn on Jumbo's departure. Or that numbers of ladies would send their photographs for Jumbo's consolation during his absence from them. Or that measurements of his travelling box should be taken, so that it might be decorated with wreaths of flowers. Can anything be much more absurd than such conduct as the following? "On Wednesday, we saw a lady weeping copiously in the Gardens. With streaming eyes and a moist handkerchief, she was testifying to the violence of her grief, inveighing against the brutality of allowing Jumbo to catch cold in his legs!"

It is impossible not to recall Trinculo's soliloquy on discovering Caliban: "Were I in England now, as once I was, and had this fish painted, not a holiday fool but would give a piece of silver. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.”

One case, however, outdoes in absurdity all the previous instances of human folly. Here is an extract from the first column of a daily newspaper, the names being suppressed :—

"On the 27th ult." (i.e., February, 1882) "at the wife of H- B-, Esq., of a son and heir (Jumbo)."

Here each sex is equally responsible, as both husband and wife must have concurred in saddling their unfortunate "son and heir with a name that will afflict him during the whole of his life, and, if he should go to a public school, will be a perpetual torment to him. "Tristram Shandy," of Sterne, or Lord Lytton's "Anachronism," "Pisistratus Caxton," were nothing in comparison of "Jumbo B."

Then legendary history was foisted upon Jumbo, and among other fables we were told that " he had been on exhibition at the London Zoo' for nearly sixty years, and that upon his back Queen Victoria and the royal family and thousands of children have ridden."

Now, all this outburst of Jumbo-worship was the work of a few days, the rest of the animal's life in the Zoological Gardens not exciting the least enthusiasm in the public mind, even among those who had ridden on his back when boys and girls, and had in after years lifted their own children into the familiar howdah.

Yet to all naturalists the years in which he passed from infancy to adult age were full of interest, and to none more so than to myself.

Some twenty-five years ago I stated ("Illustrated Nat. Hist.," i., p. 739) that I believed the African elephant to be quite as well fitted for the service of man, and that the reason why it was not captured and tamed might be found in the inferiority of the negro race when compared to the Aryan. Many of the elephants which were employed in the days of ancient history were undoubtedly of the African species, as were those highly-accomplished animals. which are stated to have walked along a set of ropes, carrying a companion in a litter.

That an African elephant should be brought to England was an epoch in Zoology, especially as the animal was very young, and might therefore be expected to live sufficiently long to enable its disposition to be carefully studied. He was then scarcely as large as an ordinary Shetland pony, and, up to the present time, when he is eleven feet in height at the shoulder, and weighs some seven tons, he has proved quite as gentle and docile as any of the Indian animals. His compatriot "Alice" has also proved herself as intelligent and capable of subjection to man as either of the two Indian elephants.

Yet the art of elephant taming has not been practised in Africa for many centuries. The natives can kill them by catching them in pitfalls, or by the "drop-trap," ie., a device by which a log of wood, armed with a poisoned spike, or a long, double-edged blade, is dropped upon them from a height.

Some tribes, more courageous than the rest, can hunt down the animal, and mob it to death, flinging spears at it until the creature dies from weariness and its multitudinous wounds.

Bravest of all are the Agageers, so well described by Sir S. Baker.

They hunt the elephant in pairs, one being armed with a long, straight sword, the edge of which is kept as keen as that of a razor, and the other being unarmed. When they hunt, both mount the same horse, the armed man being behind.

Picking out an elephant with good tusks, they ride towards him and attract his attention. The man with the sword then slips off and hides himself under any convenient bush which they may pass. His com

panion then irritates the elephant, until it charges him. The horse, which is always of the swiftest kind. and carefully trained for the purpose, intentionally keeps just so far in front of the elephant that the latter thinks of nothing but catching it.

In course of the chase, the horseman passes close by his comrade's hiding-place, the elephant being too much excited to detect him. As the great beast passes, the hunter steps from his ambush, and with a single blow severs the tendon of the heel, which in the elephant is close to the ground. The animal is instantly rendered powerless, and can be killed. without the possibility of resistance.

Even if the tendon be only partially severed, the next step is sure to snap it.

Yet in spite of the ingenuity of inventing such a feat, and the cool daring by which it is accomplished, no Agageer ever dreamed of taking the elephant alive. Nor would the Zulus, bravest of the brave as they may be, and utterly reckless of their own lives, attempt such a feat. They have been known to catch a lion alive, at the command of their king, but the very idea of taking an adult elephant alive would not have entered the head of Chaka himself.

Now, both the Agageers and the Zulus are of a much higher type than the negro, and it is therefore not at all wonderful that the negro cannot tame the elephant when tribes which are far superior to him fail to do so.

In general formation, both species very nearly resemble each other, and if the skull were removed, it would not be easy to decide whether the rest of the skeleton belonged to the African or Asiatic species. The form of the head is, however, very different, especially in the living animal.

In the first place, the enormous comparative size of the ears in the African species renders it so conspicuous that even when the animal is at rest and the ears are pressed closely against the head, there is no possibility of mistaking one species for the other. These ears, however, are best seen from the front, when the elephant is excited. In such a case, they stand out boldly on each side, looking like a pair of huge black wings.

Looking at the two species in profile, it is easy to see that the forehead of the African is convex, while that of the Asiatic is concave Looking at them from the front, the head of the African narrows below the eyes, and then widens again, very much like that of the hippopotamus.

Its form is due to the manner in which the tusks are set in their sockets.

In the Indian species, the sockets run nearly parallel to each other, so that the skull is of tolerably equal width.

Both species have the peculiarity that if, when wounded, they once fall, they never rise again. The lions, tigers, bears, and even the buffaloes, will spring to their feet even when mortally wounded, and often kill their slayer with their last struggles. But the dying elephant "subsides like a great hayrick," to use Mr. Sullivan's words, and expires so gently, that the hunter is often uncertain whether the animal be dead or merely resting.

Ivory workers often find bullets imbedded in the tusks. They have struck the root of the tusk, which is hollow, and filled with pulp, and have been gradually carried towards the tip by the growth of the tusk. In the ivory turners' department of the Crystal Palace, there are some very curious examples of imbedded balls. In one case, the track of the ball is

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elephant is, in our modern athletic slang, "a fair heel and toe pedestrian."

A glance at the skeleton will show the reason for this gait. In the elephant, the "cannon bones," or "shank bones," i.e., the middle metacarpal bone of the fore foot and the middle metatarsal bone of the hind foot are not lengthened as in the horse, and the entire foot is brought close to the ground, all five toes resting on it.

This peculiar structure of the legs enables the elephant to use them as offensive weapons. It does not kick with its hind legs like the horse, nor strike, boxer fashion, with its fore-feet, like the stag, but it hustles its foe backwards and forwards under its body, kicking it forward with the hind feet, and then

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It is strange to see how artists ignore this structure, even when they are engaged in scientific work. have now before my eyes a well-known zoological diagram for schools, in which the elephant has knee, hock, and pasterns just like a horse, and to make matters worse, is standing with the pastern of one hind foot gracefully bent!

I may here mention that the footprint of an elephant designates the size and serves to identify the animal.

It is found by measurement that twice the circumference of the foot is equal to its height at the shoulder. Now, the circumference of "Jumbo's" foot slightly exceeds five feet six inches, so that his height is a little over eleven feet.

The identity of the animal is shown by the lines which cross and recross each other in the sole of the elephant's foot, just as do the lines of the palms of our hands, and which are imprinted on soft ground. When hunters track an elephant, they copy these lines, and so are able to adhere to the "spoor" of the same animal, even when it has been mixed with the footsteps of many others.

These great feet, which can crush a tiger into a jelly, and which have to support a weight which is measured by tons, are as silent in their tread as those of a cat. All elephant hunters know that elephants can glide noiselessly through thick forests, where even the barefooted savage can scarcely tread without betraying his whereabouts.

Even upon the highroads of this country, where the shod hoof of the horse is audible far off, the elephant swings his mighty bulk along without apparent effort, and so silently that "the blind mole may not hear a footfall."

Huge as it may be, no creature is so difficult of detection. Dr. W. Knighton, the Cingalese elephant. hunter, tells me that in the forests of Ceylon you may be standing within a couple of yards of a nine. or ten feet elephant, and not be able to distinguish the animal from surrounding objects. Its legs are just like tree trunks, and its brown body merges so imperceptibly into the sombre forest shadows, that the eye is incapable of discerning it.

Both species are playful, and are even fond of toys. In one case, a large wooden ball was given to the elephants. But they became so excited with their toy, hurling it about as if it were shot from a cannon, that the keepers were obliged to remove it.

Both species practise a most curious mode of avenging themselves when angered.

In Mr. Baldwin's work on African hunting, it is mentioned that fully half a mile from any water a tolerably large crocodile was found, hanging in the fork of a tree about ten feet from the ground. The natives seemed to be familiar with this strange position for a crocodile, and said that the reptile had been put there by an elephant.

They stated that when the elephants wade into the lake (Nyami) for bathing purposes, the crocodiles are apt to worry them and bite their legs. Sometimes, when an elephant is annoyed beyond all patience, it picks up the crocodile in its trunk, puts it among the branches of a tree, and leaves it there.

The truth of this curious story is corroborated by the behaviour of an Indian elephant, very inappropriately named Pangul, or Fool.

The animal knew perfectly well the weight of the burden which he had to carry, and if he were overloaded, either refused to stir, or shook off his load by wriggling his skin.

One day an officer was trying to overload him, and became so angry at seeing the load repeatedly thrown off, that he flung a tent-peg at the elephant. Pangul took no notice at the time, but a few days afterwards he met his persecutor alone. Pangul immediately picked him up with his trunk, put him among the branches of a large tamarind tree, and left him there to get down as he could.

Gigantic as the elephant may be, it is horribly afraid of any small quadruped. A kitten which happened to stray among some elephants drove them half mad with terror, occasioning as much unreasonable consternation as a cockroach or mouse in a drawing-room full of ladies.

Yet, an elephant has been known to take a fancy to a cat, or rather, the cat took a fancy to the elephant. She had a fixed idea that his back was a sleeping-place expressly designed by nature for her, and on his back she would go. At first, the elephant took her off his back and put her out of his cage, but as fast as he put her down in front, she slipped round and climbed up his hind quarters again. So the elephant let her have her own way, and soon became quite attached to the cat.

The reader may remember that I have alluded to the assistant male elephants which play the part of the Philistines to the captive Samson, just as the koomkies take the part of Delilah.

These assistant elephants are as carefully trained to fight as our modern boxers, and, as with man, size and brute strength are of small avail before practised skill. The professional fighting elephant knows beforehand every move in the game,-when to bump his antagonist against a tree and thrash him on the neck with his trunk before he can recover from the shock, when and how to use his tusks, and when to charge with his whole weight against his adversary.

Some of these trained elephants have been sent to Africa for the double purpose of capturing African elephants and of showing the more intelligent tribes how to take elephants alive instead of merely killing them for the sake of the ivory.

The account of their transit is a very interesting one, but too long to be given in full. There was much the same difficulty in embarking them as was found with "Jumbo," but there was much more difficulty in landing them.

Owing to the peculiar shore of Zanzibar, the ship could not approach within two miles of land. At last it was decided to lower one of them, poetically named "Budding Lily," into the water, and induce her to swim ashore.

So she was slung over the side, and let gently into the sea, with the mahout on her neck. Now elephants, when bathing, are rather fond of playing a practical joke on the mahout. They sink themselves beneath the water so as to give the mahout a sound ducking, while they can breathe through the end of the proboscis, which is held out of the water.

"Budding Lily" played this same joke, but when she rose to the surface became alarmed and tried to scramble on board again. The captain of the ship sent a boat, which tried to tow the elephant land wards, but the animal was too strong, and dragged the boat back to the ship's side, up which it vainly attempted to climb.

After more than an hour had been thus wasted the elephant suddenly comprehended the situation, and swam towards shore, accompanied by the boat. Some sand-banks on the way afforded it resting places, and in about four hours after leaving the ship the first Asiatic elephant set foot on African shore.

There was little trouble with the other elephants, for they took courage from the conduct of their companion, and swam ashore after her.

One of the elephants of the Jardin des Plantes, of Paris, used to play an absurd trick with the visitors. She would sink herself until only the tip of the trunk projected from the water, and she was thereby rendered practically invisible. Then she would send a torrent of water over the spectators, who could not imagine where the deluge came from.

That elephants should be such admirable swimmers

seems very remarkable, and especially that they should have such propulsive power as to drag back a boat fully manned. The capability of sinking or rising at will in the water is equally remarkable, and is owing to the power of contracting its body so as to render it heavier than an equal bulk of water.

Activity, again, seems no characteristic of the elephant. Its apparently stiff and ungainly legs, which can swing some fourteen or fifteen feet at each step, although well enough adapted to carry the huge body along at a swift pace, appear to be totally inadequate to perform feats of activity.

Yet the elephant can climb rocks where one might think no animal but the goat would venture. It can slide down a steep hill just as a "coaster" slides down a snow-clad declivity on his sledge, and can guide or check its progress with equal skill. I have seen an elephant stand on its hind feet, or fore feet, or on the feet of one side, or on the fore foot of one side and the hind foot of the other, and all the time mounted on a wooden cylinder not large enough to support all its four feet when placed together.

Yet, though it can swim so well, and can so easily ascend and descend precipitous slopes, the elephant is utterly powerless in mud of any depth. Should it by chance stray into a quagmire it becomes frantic with terror, utters screams of mingled fear and anger, its eyes start from its head with fright, and its proboscis feels in all directions for something firm on which it may stand.

When an elephant is in this predicament, the mahout slips off over the animal's tail, and runs away as fast as he can. Did he not escape in this way, the elephant would be sure to pluck him from its neck, and place his body under his feet so as to form a support for its weight.

The only plan by which an elephant can be relieved from its awkward position is to approach as near as is consistent with safety, and to throw logs, planks, or branches of trees within reach of the proboscis. The elephant immediately seizes them, and places them one by one under its feet until it can stand firmly, and by continuing the process, makes a road by which it may regain dry ground. As soon as it has done so, the mahout resumes his place on the animal's neck, and can safely guide it as before.

Cautious as is the elephant in trusting its vast weight to anything which may seem to be unable to support it, the animal's wonderful power of balance enables it to step for almost incredible distances from one foothold to another.

First, it surveys the intervening distance, and carefully takes the measure of it. Then it leans forward, and stretches its proboscis forward so as to test the strength of the next foothold. Guided by the proboscis one fore foot is then pushed forward until it obtainst a hold.

Next follows the hind foot of the same side, and then the fore and hind feet of the opposite side are gradually transferred to their new situation, the ever restless proboscis always acting as pioneer of each step.

No one who has not seen it can realize the marvellous delicacy of the whole proceeding, or the perfection of balance shown by the apparently ungainly animal.

Judging by appearances, the elephant is about the last animal in the world which we should have thought to be swift of progress on land and in the water, a rock-climber, silent of tread as a cat, almost

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