sses that of Africa in sagacity and
tractability, and consequently in capacity for training, so as to render
its services more available to man. There does not appear to me to be
sufficient ground for this conclusion. It originated, in all
probability, in the first impressions created by the accounts of the
elephant brought back by the Greeks after the Indian expedition of
Alexander, and above all by the descriptions of Aristotle, whose
knowledge of the animal was derived exclusively from the East. A long
interval elapsed before the elephant of Africa, and its capabilities,
became known in Europe. The first elephants brought to Greece by
Antipater, were from India, as were also those introduced by Pyrrhus
into Italy. Taught by this example, the Carthaginians undertook to
employ African elephants in war. Jugurtha led them against Metellus, and
Juba against Caesar; but from inexperienced and deficient training, they
proved less effective than the elephants of India[1], and the historians
of these times ascribed to inferiority of race, that which was but the
result of insufficient education.

[Footnote 1: ARMANDI, _Hist. Milit. des Elephants_, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2.
It is an interesting fact, noticed by ARMANDI, that the elephants
figured on the coins of Alexander, and the Seleucidae invariably exhibit
the characteristics of the Indian type, whilst those on Roman medals can
at once be pronounced African, from the peculiarities of the convex
forehead and expansive ears.--_Ibid_. liv. i. cap. i. p. 3.

[Illustration]

ARMANDI has, with infinite industry, collected from original sources a
mass of curious informations relative to the employment of elephants in
ancient warfare, which he has published under the title of _Histoire
Militaire des Elephants depuis les temps les plus recules jusqu' a
l'introduction des armes a feu_. Paris. 1843.]

It must, however, be remembered that the elephants which, at a later
period, astonished the Romans by their sagacity, and whose performances
in the amphitheatre have been described by AElian and Pliny, were brought
from Africa, and acquired their accomplishments from European
instructors[1]; a sufficient proof that under equally favourable
auspices the African species are capable of developing similar docility
and powers with those of India. It is one of the facts from which the
inferiority of the Negro race has been inferred, that they alone, of all
the nations amongst whom the elephant