I am afraid you may deem me too impertinent in
joining elephants with pismires, and yet I cannot but
think it seasonable to show the nature and force of understanding,
[p. 178]
as well in the smallest as in the greatest bodies,
neither obscured in the one nor deficient in the other.
Some there are that admire in an elephant his aptness
to learn and to be taught, and the many various postures
and alterations of movement which he shows upon the
theatres, not easily to be equalled by human assiduity, as
subtle and abounding in memory and retention as man is.
But for my part, I rather choose to prove his evident understanding from the passions and inclinations of the
creature, that were never taught him, but only infused by
Nature, as being altogether unmixed and pure without the
help of art.
At Rome, not very long ago, there were many elephants
that were taught many dangerous postures, many winding
and turnings and circular screwings of their bulky bodies,
hard to be expressed; among which there was one, which,
being duller than the rest, and therefore often rated and
chastised for his stupidity, was seen in the night-time, by
moonlight, without being forced to it, to practise over his
lessons with all the industry imaginable.
Agno tells a story of an elephant in Syria, that was bred
up in a certain house, who observed that his keeper took
away and defrauded him every day of half the measure of
his barley; only that once, the master being present and
looking on, the keeper poured out the whole measure;
which was no sooner done, but the elephant, extending his
proboscis, separated the barley and divided it into two
equal parts, thereby ingeniously discovering, as much as in
him lay, the injustice of his keeper.
Another in revenge that his keeper mixed stones and
dirt with his barley, as the keeper's meat was boiling upon
the fire, took up the ashes and flung them into the pot.
Another being provoked by the boys in Rome, that
pricked his proboscis with the sharp ends of their writingsteels, caught one of them in his proboscis, and mounted
[p. 179]
him up into the air, as if he intended to have squashed
out his guts; but upon the loud outcries of the spectators,
set him gently down again upon his feet, and so went on,
believing he had sufficiently punished the boy in scaring
him. Many other things are reported of the wild elephants
that feed without control, but nothing more to be admired
than their passing, of great rivers. For first of all the
youngest and the least flounces into the stream; whom the
rest beholding from the shore, if they see that the less
bulky leader keeps steady footing with his back above
water, they are then assured and confident that they may
boldly adventure without any danger.
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