It was in the jungles of the Animallai Hills of southern India that I first became impressed by the mental capacity of the Indian elephant. I saw many wild herds. I saw elephants at work, and at one period I lived in a timber camp, consisting of working elephants and mahouts. I saw a shrewd young elephant-driver soundly flogged for stealing an elephant, farming it out to a native timber contractor for four days, and then elaborately pretending that the animal had been "lost." Later on I saw elephant performances in the "Greatest Show on Earth" and elsewhere, and for eighteen years I have been chief mourner over the idiosyncrasies of Gunda and Alice. If I do not now know something about elephants, then my own case of animal intelligence is indeed hopeless. To me it seems that the only thing necessary to establish the elephant as an animal of remarkable intellect and power of original reasoning is to set forth the unadorned facts that lie ready to hand. Cuvier recorded the opinion that in sagacity the elephant in no way excels the dog and some other species of carnivora. Sir Emerson Tennent, even after some study of the elephant, was disposed to award the palm for intelligence to the dog, but only "from the higher degree of development consequent on his more intimate domestication and association with man." In the mind of G. P. Sanderson we fear that familiarity with the elephant bred a measure of contempt; and this seems very strange. He says: "Its reasoning faculties are undoubtedly far below those of the dog, and possibly of other animals; and in matters beyond its daily experience it evinces no special discernment." To me it seems that all three of those opinions are off the target. The dog is not a wild, untrammeled animal; and neither dogs, cats nor savage men evince any special discernment "beyond the range of their daily experience." Moreover, there are some millions of tame men of whom the same may be said with entire safety. Very often the question is asked: "Is the African elephant equal in intelligence and training capacity to the Indian species?" To this we must answer: Not proven. We do not know. The African species never has been tried out on the same long and wide basis as the Indian. Many individual African elephants, very intelligent, have been trained, successfully, and have given good accounts of themselves. For my own part I am absolutely sure that when taken in hand at the same age, and trained on the same basis as the Indian species, the African elephant will be found mentally quite the equal of the Indian, and just as available for work or performances.