When the females come in season this social intercourse yields to a more lively sentiment; the herd separate in pairs, having each chosen their mates; they then seek for solitary places, and in their march love seems to precede and modesty to follow them; for they observe the greatest mystery in their amours, and they have never been seen to couple. They avoid the inspection of their own species, and, perhaps, know better than ourselves the pure delight of secret pleasure, being wholly taken with one beloved object. They retire into shady woods and most solitary places, to give themselves up, without disturbance or restraint, to the impulses of Nature, which are strong and lasting, as they have long intervals between their seasons of love. The female goes two years with young; when she is in that condition the male abstains from her, and thus are they subjected to the influence of love but once in three years. They bring forth only one young, which has teeth at its birth, and is then bigger than a wild boar; his tusks are not visible, but they appear soon after, and when six months old they are some inches long. At that age the elephant is bigger than the ox, and the tusks continue to increase till he is much advanced in years, provided the animal is in health, and at liberty, for it is scarcely to be imagined how much slavery and unnatural food change his natural habit and constitution. The elephant is easily tamed, brought into submission, and instructed, and as he is the strongest and most sensible of animals, he is more serviceable than any of them; but he seems always to feel his servile condition, for though subject to the powerful impressions of love they never couple, nor produce in a state of domesticity. His passion, irritated by constraint, degenerates into fury; as he cannot indulge it without witnesses he becomes violent and intractable, and the strongest chains and fetters are often found necessary to stop his impetuosity, and subdue his anger. Thus the elephant differs from all domestic animals which man treats or manages as beings without will; he is not like these born slaves, which we mutilate or multiply for our use. Here the individual alone is a slave, the species remains independent, and constantly refuses to increase for the benefit of their tyrants. This alone shews in the elephant elevated sentiments superior to the nature of common brutes. To be agitated by the most ardent desires, and to deny themselves the satisfaction of enjoying them; to be subjected to all the fury of love, and yet not to violate the laws of modesty, are, perhaps, the highest efforts of human virtue, but which in these majestic animals are all suggested by instinct, and from which they never deviate. Enraged that they cannot be gratified without witnesses their fury becomes stronger than their passion of love, destroys the effects of it, and provokes, at the same time, that anger which, in those instants, renders the elephant more dangerous