The idea prevailed in ancient times, and obtains even at the present day, that the Indian elephant surpasses that of Africa in sagacity and tractability, and consequently in capacity for training, so as to render its services more available to man.  There does not appear to me to be sufficient ground for this conclusion.  It originated, in all probability, in the first impressions created by the accounts of the elephant brought back by the Greeks after the Indian expedition of Alexander, and above all by the descriptions of Aristotle, whose knowledge of the animal was derived exclusively from the East.  A long interval elapsed before the elephant of Africa, and its capabilities, became known in Europe.  The first elephants brought to Greece by Antipater, were from India, as were also those introduced by Pyrrhus into Italy.  Taught by this example, the Carthaginians undertook to employ African elephants in war.  Jugurtha led them against Metellus, and Juba against Caesar; but from inexperienced and deficient training, they proved less effective than the elephants of India[1], and the historians of these times ascribed to inferiority of race, that which was but the result of insufficient education.

[Footnote 1:  ARMANDI, Hist.  Milit. des Elephants, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2.  It is an interesting fact, noticed by ARMANDI, that the elephants figured on the coins of Alexander, and the Seleucidae invariably exhibit the characteristics of the Indian type, whilst those on Roman medals can at once be pronounced African, from the peculiarities of the convex forehead and expansive ears.—­Ibid. liv. i. cap. i. p. 3.

[Illustration]

ARMANDI has, with infinite industry, collected from original sources a mass of curious informations relative to the employment of elephants in ancient warfare, which he has published under the title of Histoire Militaire des Elephants depuis les temps les plus recules jusqu’ a l’introduction des armes a feu.  Paris. 1843.]

It must, however, be remembered that the elephants which, at a later period, astonished the Romans by their sagacity, and whose performances in the amphitheatre have been described by AElian and Pliny, were brought from Africa, and acquired their accomplishments from European instructors[1]; a sufficient proof that under equally favourable auspices the African species are capable of developing similar docility and powers with those of India.  It is one of the facts from which the inferiority of the Negro race has been inferred, that they alone, of all the nations amongst whom the elephant is found, have never manifested ability to domesticate it; and even as regards the more highly developed races who inhabited the valley of the Nile, it is observable that the elephant is nowhere to be found amongst the animals figured on the monuments of ancient Egypt, whilst the camelopard, the lion, and even the hippopotamus are represented.  And although in later times the knowledge of the art of training appears to have existed under the Ptolemies, and on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, it admits of no doubt that it was communicated by the more accomplished natives of India who had settled there.[2]