I have thus attempted to describe the main duties which elephants have to discharge in the timber-yards, and I have mentioned that they are guided by the voice, stick, or heels of the mahout. Watching them from shipboard, you are quite close enough to note every movement of the animal, but not sufficiently near to catch the signal, so that the elephantine actions seem purely automatic, and therefore the more astonishing. But when you are alongside the animal, and can see and hear the simple signals under which he works, you are equally astonished at the thorough manner in which he understands what he is expected to do, and the very little prompting he requires. On one occasion, I arranged with a mahout to bring up his elephant to where I was standing, that I might indicate the work to be done, the mahout to be absolutely silent. Standing by a six-foot log, I beckoned to the mahout, and up came the elephant. Arrived at the spot, and being without chains, he must have opined that dragging was not intended. There remained, then, pushing or carrying, the latter operation being the one which the sagacious creature saw was intended, for he proceeded at once with his awkward preparations for carrying it away. Throughout this test the mahout was absolutely silent, and, as far as I could see, quite passive. The result of it was that the elephant divined: what I, a stranger, wished it to do, and did it. On another occasion, I applied the test to a difficult object, an eighteen-inch cube of teak, which the dear old fellow at once arranged to carry off; but how to do it, he could not at first determine. As his tusks diverged more than eighteen inches, they were no support, and the many sharp corners of the cube sorely tried the delicate trunk. After some failures, he managed to seize the fragment by the centre, and then raise it up below the tusks against his lower lip. As he had virtually accomplished the task, I discontinued the experiment, expressing my satisfaction and delight to the manager, who somewhat damped my ardour by informing me that the mahout, while abstaining from use of voice or stick, might have conveyed his wishes to the elephant by pressure with his heels! But a moment’s reflection increased my admiration at the elephant’s intelligence, for, allowing that the mahout’s heels _had_ pressed his side, how could such pressure inform him that he was neither to drag nor push, but carry? Surely the mahout could not have possessed a code of pressure-signals with which he had indoctrinated the elephant in prospect of curious visitors. If he had, then it must have included voice and stick signalling as well, to either of which I might have resorted. No; I believe that the elephant acted independently of signals, and reasoned on what he had to do, by what was laid before him.