[109] _The Rifle and the Hound_, p. 13. [110] _Menageries_ _etc._ “The Elephant,” ch. i. p. 21. [111] _System of Phrenology_, by GEO. COMBE, vol. i. p. 256. [112] Private letter from Capt. PHILIP PAYNE GALLWEY. [113] Some years ago an elephant which had been wounded by a native, near Hambangtotte, pursued the man into the town, followed him along the street, trampled him to death in the bazaar before a crowd of terrified spectators, and succeeded in making good its retreat to the jungle. [114] SHAW, in his _Zoology_, asserts that an elephant can run as swiftly as a horse can gallop. London, 1800-6, vol. i. p. 216. [115] The device of taking them by means of pitfalls still prevails in India; but in addition to the difficulty of providing against that caution with which the elephant is supposed to reconnoitre suspicious ground, it has the further disadvantage of exposing him to injury from bruises and dislocations in his fall. Still it was the mode of capture employed by the Singhalese, and so late as 1750 WOLF relates that the native chiefs of the Wanny, when capturing elephants for the Dutch, made “pits some fathoms deep in those places whither the elephant is wont to go in search of food, across which were laid poles covered with branches and baited with the food of which he is fondest, making towards which he finds himself taken unawares. Thereafter being subdued by fright and exhaustion, he was assisted to raise himself to the surface by means of hurdles and earth, which he placed underfoot as they were thrown down to him, till he was enabled to step out on solid ground, when the noosers and decoys were in readiness to tie him up to the nearest tree.” (See WOLF’S _Life and Adventures_, p. 152.) Shakspeare appears to have been acquainted with the plan of taking elephants in pitfalls: Decius, encouraging the conspirators, reminds them of Cæsar’s taste for anecdotes of animals, by which he would undertake to lure him to his fate: “For he loves to hear That unicorns may be betrayed with trees, And bears with glasses: _elephants with holes_.” JULIUS CÆSAR, Act ii. Scene I. [116] KNOX’S _Historical Relation of Ceylon_, A. D. 1681, part i. ch. vi. p. 21. [117] Previous to the death of the female elephant in the Zoological Gardens, in the Regent’s Park, in 1851, Mr. MITCHELL, the Secretary, caused measurements to be accurately made, and found the statement of the Singhalese hunters to be strictly correct, the height at the shoulders being precisely twice the circumference of the fore foot. In an African elephant killed by Sir S. Baker, this proportion did not hold good, as the circumference of the fore foot was 4 feet 11-1/4 inches, and the height at the shoulder 10 feet 6-1/2 inches. (BAKER, _The Albert Nyanza_, vol. ii. p. 10.)