But whatever may be its natural gentleness and docility, the temper of an elephant is seldom to be implicitly relied on in a state of captivity and coercion.  The most amenable are subject to occasional fits of stubbornness; and even after years of submission, irritability and resentment will unaccountably manifest themselves.  It may be that the restraints and severer discipline of training have not been entirely forgotten; or that incidents which in ordinary health would be productive of no demonstration whatever, may lead, in moments of temporary illness, to fretfulness and anger.  The knowledge of this infirmity led to the popular belief recorded by PHILE, that the elephant had two hearts, under the respective influences of which it evinced ferocity of gentleness; subdued by the one to habitual tractability and obedience, but occasionally roused by the other to displays of rage and resistance.[1]

[Footnote 1: 
  [Greek: 
  “Diples de phasin euporesai kardias
  Kai te men einai thumikon to therion
  Eis akrate kinesin erethismenon,
  Te de prosenes kai thrasytetos xenon. 
  Kai pe men auton akroasthai ton logon
  Ous an tis Indos eu tithaseuon legoi,
  Pe de pros autous tous nomeis epitrechein
  Eis tas palaias ektrapen kakoupgias.”]
       PHILE, Expos. de Eleph., l. 126, &c.]

In the process of taming, the presence of the tame ones can generally be dispensed with after two months, and the captive may then be ridden by the driver alone; and after three or four months he may be entrusted with labour, so far as regards docility;—­but it is undesirable, and even involves the risk of life, to work an elephant too soon; it has frequently happened that a valuable animal has lain down and died the first time it was tried in harness, from what the natives believe to be “broken heart,”—­certainly without any cause inferable from injury or previous disease.[1] It is observable, that till a captured elephant begins to relish food, and grow fat upon it, he becomes so fretted by work, that it kills him in an incredibly short space of time.

[Footnote 1:  Captain YULE, in his Narrative of an Embassy to Ava in 1855, records an illustration of this tendency of the elephant to sudden death; one newly captured, the process of taming which was exhibited to the British Envoy, “made vigorous resistance to the placing of a collar on its neck, and the people were proceeding to tighten it, when the elephant, which had lain down as if quite exhausted, reared suddenly on the hind quarters, and fell on its side—­dead!”—­P. 104.

Mr. STRACHAN noticed the same liability of the elephants to sudden death from very slight causes; “of the fall.” he says, “at any time, though on plain ground, they either die immediately, or languish till they die; their great weight occasioning them so much hurt by the fall.”—­Phil.  Trans. A.D. 1701, vol. xxiii. p. 1052.]