Part 10 (1/2)
[Footnote 1: One of the most venerable authorities by whom the fallacy was transmitted to modern times was PHILIP de THAUN, who wrote, about the year 1121, A.D., his _Livre des Creatures_, dedicated to Adelaide of Louvaine, Queen of Henry I. of England. In the copy of it printed by the Historical Society of Science in 1841, and edited by Mr. WRIGHT, the following pa.s.sage occurs:--
”Et Ysidre nus dit ki le elefant descrit,
Es jambes par nature nen ad que une jointure, Il ne pot pas gesir quant il se volt dormir, Ke si cuchet estait par sei nen leverait; Pur ceo li stot apuier, el lui del cucher, U a arbre u a mur, idunc dort aseur.
E le gent de la terre, ki li volent conquere, Li mur enfunderunt, u le arbre enciserunt; Quant li elefant vendrat, ki s'i apuierat, La arbre u le mur carrat, e il tribucherat; Issi faiterement le parnent cele gent.”
P. 100.]
As elephants were but rarely seen in Europe prior to the seventeenth century, there were but few opportunities of correcting the popular fallacy by ocular demonstration. Hence SHAKSPEARE still believed that,
”The elephant hath joints; but none for courtesy: His legs are for necessity, not flexure:”[1]
and DONNE sang of
”Nature's great masterpiece, an Elephant; The only harmless great thing: Yet Nature hath given him no knee to bend: Himself he up-props, on himself relies; Still sleeping stands.”[2]
[Footnote 1: _Troilus and Cressida_, act ii. sc. 3. A.D. 1609.]
[Footnote 2: _Progress of the Soul_, A.D. 1633.]
Sir THOMAS BROWNE, while he argues against the delusion, does not fail to record his suspicion, that ”although the opinion at present be reasonably well suppressed, yet from the strings of tradition and fruitful recurrence of errour, it was not improbable it might revive in the next generation;”[1]--an antic.i.p.ation which has proved singularly correct; for the heralds still continued to explain that the elephant is the emblem of watchfulness, ”_nec jacet in somno,”_[2] and poets almost of our own times paint the scene when
”Peaceful, beneath primeval trees, that cast Their ample shade on Niger's yellow stream, Or where the Ganges rolls his sacred waves, _Leans_ the huge Elephant.”[3]
[Footnote 1: Sir T. BROWNE, _Vulgar Errors_, A.D. 1646.]
[Footnote 2: RANDAL HOME'S _Academy of Armory_, A.D. 1671. HOME only perpetuated the error of GUILLAM, who wrote his _Display of Heraldry_ in A.D. 1610; wherein he explains that the elephant is ”so proud of his strength that he never bows himself to any (_neither indeed can he_), and when he is once down he cannot rise up again.”--Sec. III. ch. xii. p. 147.]
[Footnote 3: THOMSON'S _Seasons_, A.D. 1728.]
It is not difficult to see whence this antiquated delusion took its origin; nor is it, as Sir THOMAS BROWNE imagined, to be traced exclusively ”to the grosse and cylindricall structure” of the animal's legs. The fact is, that the elephant, returning in the early morning from his nocturnal revels in the reservoirs and water-courses, is accustomed to rub his muddy sides against a tree, and sometimes against a rock if more convenient. In my rides through the northern forests, the natives of Ceylon have often pointed out that the elephants which had preceded me must have been of considerable size, from the height at which their marks had been left on the trees against which they had been rubbing. Not unfrequently the animals themselves, overcome with drowsiness from the night's gambolling, are found dosing and resting against the trees they had so visited, and in the same manner they have been discovered by sportsmen asleep, and leaning against a rock.
It is scarcely necessary to explain that the position is accidental, and that it is taken by the elephant not from any difficulty in lying at length on the ground, but rather from the coincidence that the structure of his legs affords such support in a standing position, that reclining scarcely adds to his enjoyment of repose; and elephants in a state of captivity have been known for months together to sleep without lying down.[1] So distinctive is this formation, and so self-sustaining the configuration of the limbs, that an elephant shot in the brain, by Major Rogers in 1836, was killed so instantaneously that it died literally _on its knees_, and remained resting on them. About the year 1826, Captain Dawson, the engineer of the great road to Kandy, over the Kaduganava pa.s.s, shot an elephant at Hangwelle on the banks of the Kalany Ganga; _it remained on its feet_, but so motionless, that after discharging a few more b.a.l.l.s, he was induced to go close to it, and found it dead.
[Footnote 1: So little is the elephant inclined to lie down in captivity, and even after hard labour, that the keepers are generally disposed to suspect illness when he betakes himself to this posture.
PHILE, in his poem _De Animalium Proprietate_, attributes the propensity of the elephant to sleep on his legs, to the difficulty he experiences in rising to his feet:
[Greek: 'Orthostaden de kai katheudei panychos 'HOt ouk anastesai men eucheros pelei.]
But this is a misapprehension.]
The real peculiarity in the elephant in lying down is, that he extends his hind legs backwards as a man does when he kneels, instead of bringing them under him like the horse or any other quadruped. The wise purpose of this arrangement must be obvious to any one who observes the struggle with which the horse _gets up_ from the ground, and the violent efforts which he makes to raise himself erect. Such an exertion in the case of the elephant, and the force requisite to apply a similar movement to raise his weight (equal to four or five tons) would be attended with a dangerous strain upon the muscles, and hence the simple arrangement, which by enabling him to draw the hind feet gradually under him, a.s.sists him to rise without a perceptible effort.
The same construction renders his gait not a ”gallop,” as it has been somewhat loosely described[1], which would be too violent a motion for so vast a body; but a shuffle, that he can increase at pleasure to a pace as rapid as that of a man at full speed, but which he cannot maintain for any considerable distance.
[Footnote 1: _Menageries, &c_. ”The elephant,” ch. i. Sir CHARLES BELL, in his essay on _The Hand and its Mechanism_, which forms one of the ”Bridgewater Treatises,” has exhibited the reasons deducible from organisation, which show the incapacity of the elephant to _spring_ or _leap_ like the horse and other animals whose structure is designed to facilitate agility and speed. In them the various bones of the shoulder and fore limbs, especially the clavicle and humerus, are set at such an angle, that the shock in descending is modified, and the joints and sockets protected from the injury occasioned by concussion. But in the elephant, where the weight of the body is immense, the bones of the leg, in order to present solidify and strength to sustain it, are built in one firm and perpendicular column; instead of being placed somewhat obliquely at their points of contact. Thus whilst the force of the weight in descending is broken and distributed by this arrangement in the case of the horse; it would be so concentrated in the elephant as to endanger every joint from the toe to the shoulder.]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
It is to the structure of the knee-joint that the elephant is indebted for his singular facility in ascending and descending steep activities, climbing rocks and traversing precipitous ledges, where even a mule dare not venture; and this again leads to the correction of another generally received error, that his legs are ”formed more for strength than flexibility, and fitted to bear an enormous weight upon a level surface, without the necessity of ascending or descending great acclivities.”[1]