and a fine time they must have had of it when all Europe was one field of undulating plains and dense forests, and the ancestors of our cattle crashed through the tangled bushes, drank by the silent rivers, or grazed on the wild rough herbage. Then, where town and villages now stand, there must have been scenes such as travellers still relate of Central Africa, where amid dense jungle, magnificent forests, and flat marshy grounds,

“... the elephant browses at peace in his wood,

And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood,

And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will,

In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill.”

There the huge buffaloes come down in troops out of the forest to drink, while the great hippopotamuses leave their watery bed to feed on the rough grass of the swamps. Not far off, a herd of zebras comes galloping by to drink lower down in the river, startling the large antelopes feeding quietly in the soft green pasture above, for they know that this is the hour when the lions are abroad and will fall upon any straggler with tooth and nail, while the distant howling of the hyænas shows that they would not be far behind in seizing upon any weak or wounded animal. But little does the heavy rhinoceros care for all this as he too tramps slowly along on his way to drink, for with his size and defences he runs but little risk of attack. Thus all the country is alive with large milk-givers, and we realise that when they ruled all over the world, as they still do in Africa, they too must have had their time of triumph and greatness like the great fish or the monster reptiles.

But hush! as we watch this scene a heavy thud, thud, strikes upon our ear, like the tramping of heavy troops upon soft ground. It is the “lords of the forest,” the large Elephants, which, after feeding all day in the shady jungle, are coming down to drink and bathe. What, then, is the history of these huge antiquated animals that they have not come into our story as yet? The reason is this: as they stand alone now with their huge flapping ears, their column-like legs and feet, and their long grasping trunk, so they have stood apart from the hoofed animals almost as long as we have any knowledge of them. So far as we can judge by their skeleton, especially the shoulder blade, they come nearer to the gnawers, or rodents, than to any of the large vegetable-feeders. Their legs are awkward and their gait clumsy, for the thigh bones are enormously long and thick, and the toes are enclosed in a thick pad with only the nails to mark them; but above all it is the head and mouth which make so strange a figure. Look at the huge forehead, showing a skull of immense size. This skull would be far too heavy to carry if it were not full of hollows, making a large framework to bear the tusks of smooth white ivory, which grow out from the upper jaw to a length of more than six feet on each side,[172] and weigh sometimes from eighty to one hundred pounds. Surely a wonderful size for teeth, and we shall not wonder that they are the only front teeth that the elephant has, and that they go on growing all his life from a permanent pulp, like the gnawing teeth of the rodents. But if he

Footnote 172. In the African elephant; in the Indian they are smaller, and the female has none.

opens his mouth you will see that, besides these, he has at the back huge flat grinders, one, or never more than two, at a time on each side; but those are monsters, with hard enamelled ridges for grinding his food. During his lifetime of about a hundred years the elephant grows six of these teeth on each side, twenty-four in all, the new ones growing up at the back and pushing forward as the old ones wear away.

Fig. 72.

The Indian Elephant.

And, last of all, look at his wonderful trunk; see how it grows out straight from his face, his cheeks merging into it so that he is all nose; and then consider that this trunk, a double-barrelled tube, ending

in a fleshy finger opposite to a thick cushion which acts as a thumb, is the elephant’s arm and hand, with which he feels and grasps and tests everything that comes in his way. With it he can pick up a crumb or root up a strong tree, gather a leaf or tear off a branch, draw up a gallon of water to squirt over his body when heated with the sun, or suck up the few drops in a puddle when water is scarce; with it he caresses those he loves, as gently as a mother strokes her child with her hand, or uses it to dash his enemy upon the ground, before he pierces him with his tusks or tramples him under foot.

And yet this formidable and delicate weapon is nothing more than a long fleshy nose and upper lip, provided with millions of interlaced muscles, which draw it in every direction, guided by the delicate nerves. If we did not see it, could we have believed that any creature could have gained so much experience, and learned to do so many wonderful things as elephants do, merely by possessing a movable nose?

Yet so it is, for if the elephant stands far above all other vegetable-feeding animals in intelligence and even reasoning power, we can only attribute it to two causes—the long life he leads, and the delicate implement he carries for testing things around him. The strongest of all animals, he has reigned supreme for ages, even the lion or the tiger often meeting a terrible death from his trunk, his tusks, or his heavy feet, if they venture to attack him; while everywhere, during his hundred years of life, he has handled and tested and tried every object he has come near with his fleshy trunk, till now when we examine his brain we find that though small for so large an animal it is folded and refolded into those curious convolutions which are always found in highly intelligent animals.

For many long ages this education must have been going on; for already, when the monkeys and opossums were playing about the trees in England, an ancient elephant called the Mastodon, having four tusks, was roaming over Europe, Asia, and America; while soon after, the hairy Mammoth, kept warm by his shaggy coat, wandered right up into the snows of Siberia and the extreme of North America, and often met his death in the ice, and true elephants ruled the world in Europe and India, continuing down to our day. All these had the same delicate trunk, and gained experience as they wandered over the wide world, till some have become extinct and others have shrunk back into the dense forests of Africa and India, where they often give proofs of a power of reasoning which surprises us, and make them seem like old patriarchs of a bygone time, looking thoughtfully upon a world which has grown new and strange.

* * * * *

And here we must take leave of the Herbivora, and turn our attention to that large army of flesh-feeders which we find throughout all past ages harassing and destroying the vegetable-feeders on all sides, killing their young, falling upon the stragglers, the weak and the aged, and keeping down their numbers by constant persecution. For, since the whole world is teeming with life, and countless new beings are coming into existence day after day, there is no creature on the earth which has not some other creature to prey upon it. Thus, for example, the whole host of small animals, rats and rabbits, moles, shrews, and small birds of all kinds, have their special pursuers in long wiry-bodied civets and ichneumons, weasels, pole-cats, ferrets, pine-martens, and paradoxures, which can work their way into a hole, give chase through the long grass, or climb the trees and feed on birds’ eggs or young birds. There is a vast multitude of these smaller flesh-eating animals, with teeth so sharp that a weasel will kill its prey in a second by piercing the skull by its bite; and they make sad havoc all over the world among young and weak creatures, while a great many of them, such as the weasel tribe, the pole-cat, and the skunk, are themselves protected

from larger animals of prey by their disagreeable smell.

Fig. 73.

The Weasel[173]—a small, long, narrow-bodied carnivorous animal.

Then the birds again have their numbers greatly thinned by the wild cats, tiger-cats, and racoons; while the fox, the badger, and the glutton, do their share in devouring partridges and all ground birds, hares, rabbits, and even lambs and other young creatures.

Fig. 74.

The Egyptian Ichneumon,[174] a long-bodied carnivore, sucking crocodile’s eggs.

Lastly the fish, too, have their pursuers, for the mink and the otter, though true land animals, seek their food in the water, the sea-otter giving us a hint as to how such flesh-eating animals as seals, which are the great fish-devourers, took to a watery life. But though these smaller flesh-eaters are spread in

Footnote 173. Mustelus.

Footnote 174. Herpestes.

great numbers over the world, the civets and ichneumons only in the Eastern Hemisphere, the racoons only in America, and the weasels and their relations everywhere, yet the war they carry on is but little seen compared with the ravages of their more imposing relations the wolves, the bears, and the lions, tigers, and their kin. For these animals seek their prey among the buffaloes, antelopes, horses, sheep, and hogs, and where they go they leave the track of blood behind them, and appear indeed as ruthless destroyers.

And yet it would not be fair to speak of these larger flesh-feeding animals as if they had worked nothing but evil to their more peaceful neighbours; for how would Life educate her children if she put no difficulties in their way to be conquered, no sufferings to be endured? We saw that in the beginning the vegetable-feeders were neither so strong, so intelligent, nor so swift of foot as they are now, while the flesh-feeders were not nearly so well armed for destruction as the tigers and lions of to-day.

It was in the long long struggle for life that the animals with the largest and strongest horns got the upper hand, that the swiftest horses or antelopes survived and left young ones, that the best climbers baffled their hungry pursuers, while the most intelligent and cautious feeders learned to herd together and watch for danger; while we must remember that it is more often the sickly, worn-out, and diseased animals that fall a prey to the devourers, and their life is ended far less painfully than if they dragged themselves into some hole to die. And so, too, on the other hand, with the flesh-feeders themselves. It was no wanton cruelty that taught them to hunt for prey, to creep stealthily along and leap upon their victims, and to take advantage of the weak and feeble. It was pressing hunger and the necessity of providing their young ones with food; and they, too, have often suffered in the struggle; so that it was only the strongest, healthiest, and best armed, that won the victory and were able to bring up their children.

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