“Et Ysidre nus dit ki le elefant descrit,

* * * * *

  Es jambes par nature nen ad que une jointure,
  Il ne pot pas gesir quant il se volt dormir,
  Ke si cuchet estait par sei nen leverait;
  Pur ceo li stot apuier, el lui del cucher,
  U a arbre u a mur, idunc dort aseur.

  E le gent de la terre, ki li volent conquere,
  Li mur enfunderunt, u le arbre enciserunt;
  Quant li elefant vendrat, ki s’i apuierat,
  La arbre u le mur carrat, e il tribucherat;
  Issi faiterement le parnent cele gent.” 
  P. 100.]

As elephants were but rarely seen in Europe prior to the seventeenth century, there were but few opportunities of correcting the popular fallacy by ocular demonstration.  Hence SHAKSPEARE still believed that,

  “The elephant hath joints; but none for courtesy: 
  His legs are for necessity, not flexure:"[1]

and DONNE sang of

  “Nature’s great masterpiece, an Elephant;
  The only harmless great thing: 
  Yet Nature hath given him no knee to bend: 
  Himself he up-props, on himself relies;
  Still sleeping stands."[2]

[Footnote 1:  Troilus and Cressida, act ii. sc. 3.  A.D. 1609.]

[Footnote 2:  Progress of the Soul, A.D. 1633.]

Sir THOMAS BROWNE, while he argues against the delusion, does not fail to record his suspicion, that “although the opinion at present be reasonably well suppressed, yet from the strings of tradition and fruitful recurrence of errour, it was not improbable it might revive in the next generation;"[1]—­an anticipation which has proved singularly correct; for the heralds still continued to explain that the elephant is the emblem of watchfulness, “nec jacet in somno,"[2] and poets almost of our own times paint the scene when

“Peaceful, beneath primeval trees, that cast Their ample shade on Niger’s yellow stream, Or where the Ganges rolls his sacred waves, Leans the huge Elephant."[3]

[Footnote 1:  Sir T. BROWNE, Vulgar Errors, A.D. 1646.]

[Footnote 2:  RANDAL HOME’S Academy of Armory, A.D. 1671.  HOME only perpetuated the error of GUILLAM, who wrote his Display of Heraldry in A.D. 1610; wherein he explains that the elephant is “so proud of his strength that he never bows himself to any (neither indeed can he), and when he is once down he cannot rise up again.”—­Sec.  III. ch. xii. p. 147.]

[Footnote 3:  THOMSON’S Seasons, A.D. 1728.]

It is not difficult to see whence this antiquated delusion took its origin; nor is it, as Sir THOMAS BROWNE imagined, to be traced exclusively “to the grosse and cylindricall structure” of the animal’s legs.  The fact is, that the elephant, returning in the early morning from his nocturnal revels in the reservoirs and water-courses, is accustomed to rub his muddy sides against a tree, and sometimes