‘The highly trained male elephants with tusks manage the “ounging” part of their work very skilfully. The trunk is used as a pad or buffer between the ivory and the wood, and the pushing is done steadily. An average log weighs about a ton and a half. When it has to be pushed into the river, the elephant feels the end of it with his trunk, and having ascertained where he can place his tusks with most advantage, he adjusts the buffer, and starts off pushing the log steadily before him. Should it happen to be an extra-heavy one, he stops occasionally to take breath; and as it slides down the muddy bank towards the water, he gives it a finishing slap, as if to say: “There, you’re afloat at last!” Sometimes the logs are awkwardly jammed up together, so that the ends have to be raised in order to get the dragging-chains fastened. This he does by putting his tusks underneath; and passing his trunk over the log to keep it steady, lifts it up to the required height. When it is a very heavy lift, he will go down on his knees to get a better purchase. He stacks the timber most skilfully also by lifting the end of the log as much as nine or ten feet in this manner, places it on the top of the pile, then goes to the other end and pushes it forward till he gets it quite flush with the rest. In all this he is of course directed by his rider the _mahout_, who uses certain words which the elephant has been accustomed to hear; and signs, the meaning of which he knows perfectly. A push of the foot behind the right or left ear makes him answer the driver’s wish as a boat answers the rudder, and a nudge behind the neck means “Straight ahead.” ‘A highly trained elephant, however, will work among timber by _verbal_ directions as intelligently almost as a collie will among sheep. The finest and best-trained animals are reserved for employment in the saw-mills, where they work amongst the machinery with sagacity and precision. Strangers have sometimes been so much impressed with their admirable qualities in this respect that they have carried away slightly exaggerated impressions on the subject. One case I remember in which a spectator was so profoundly overcome by the careful manner in which he saw the elephant laying planks and slabs on the travelling benches to be cut, that he gravely reported the circumstance in an Indian newspaper, remarking that the animal shut one eye when it looked along the bench, to make sure the timber was laid on for the saw accurately!