Major Skinner writes of a large wild elephant which he saw on a moonlight night coming out of a wood that skirted some water. Cautiously advancing across the open ground to within a hundred yards of the water, the animal stood perfectly motionless—the rest of the herd, still concealed in the wood, being all the while so quiet and motionless that not the least sound proceeded from them. Gradually, after three successive advances, halting some minutes after each, he moved up to the water’s edge, in which however he did not think proper to quench his thirst, but remained for several minutes listening in perfect stillness. He then returned cautiously and slowly to the point at which he had issued from the wood, whence he came back with five other elephants, with which he proceeded, somewhat less slowly than before, to within a few yards of the tank, where he posted them as patrols. He then re-entered the wood and collected the whole herd, which must have amounted to between eighty and a hundred, and led them across the open ground, with the most extraordinary composure and quiet, till they came up to the five sentinels, when he left them for a moment and again made a reconnaissance at the edge of the tank. At last, being apparently satisfied that all was safe, he turned back, and obviously gave the order to advance; “for in a moment,” says Major Skinner, “the whole herd rushed to the water, with a degree of unreserved confidence so opposite to the caution and timidity which had marked their previous movements, that nothing will ever persuade me that there was not rational and preconcerted co-operation throughout the whole party”—and so, of course, some definite communication by signs (p. 401).