In the family feud which was held to exist between the elephant and the dragon the reptile endeavoured to twist himself round the ponderous beast’s feet and so bring him to the ground, but the sagacity of the elephant here stood him in good stead, and when he saw that his fall was inevitable, he also saw the great advantage of flattening the life out of his foe by falling with all his huge bulk upon him. The blood produced by these sanguinary combats soaked into the earth and thus yielded the cinnabar of commerce. Possibly some early observer may have seen a deadly struggle in the jungle between an elephant and some huge python or boa, and being content to view from some little distance, may have filled in the details from imagination and thus set the story afloat. When a tale of this nature once gained credence, one old writer after another inserted it in his work without further question. The elephant was said to be afraid of a mouse, though the ancient authors unfortunately fail to satisfy our very legitimate curiosity as to why this should be so; in an old romance, dealing with the wars of the great Alexander, the elephants of the enemy are put to rout by the squeaking of a herd of swine brought for the nonce on to the tented field. The elephant was first used in war by Pyrrhus, who, B.C. 280, employed these animals in the war with Tarentum against the Romans. We learn also that the Carthaginians, in the time of Hannibal, B.C. 210, employed them in their wars; and we have modern illustrations of the like service amongst the various princes of India. When the Romans in Leucania first saw the elephants in the battle array of Pyrrhus, they called them Leucanian oxen. “Next the Poeni taught the horrible Leucanian oxen, with lowered body and snake-like head, to endure the wounds of war, and to throw into confusion the mighty ranks of Mars.” Later on the Romans introduced them into their own service, and in one of the triumphal entries of Cæsar into Rome his chariot was drawn by forty elephants. A little later on we read of their appearance in the arena, dancing and wrestling with each other, walking on stretched ropes, four of them carrying a fifth on their shoulders reposing on a litter or couch, and generally going through those performances that from the earliest times to the travelling show of to-day have been received by the vulgar with such favour. Both Pliny and Plutarch tell us that if any one elephant in such a gathering for any reason fails to do what is required of him he will study by night, in what a workman would call “his own time,” to achieve success, and go through the performance of his own accord when the rest of the world is sleeping, until he has mastered it.