In illustration of the attachment of the elephant to its young, the authority of KNOX has been quoted, that “the shees are alike tender of any one’s young ones as of their own."[1] Their affection in this particular is undoubted, but I question whether it exceeds that of other animals; and the trait thus adduced of their indiscriminate kindness to all the young of the herd,—­of which I have myself been an eye-witness,—­so far from being an evidence of the strength of parental attachment individually, is, perhaps, somewhat inconsistent with the existence of such a passion to any extraordinary degree.[2] In fact, some individuals, who have had extensive facilities for observation, doubt whether the fondness of the female elephants for their offspring is so great as that of many other animals; as instances are not wanting in Ceylon, in which, when pursued by the hunters, the herd has abandoned the young ones in their flight, notwithstanding the cries of the latter for help.

[Footnote 1:  A correspondent of Buffon, M. MARCELLUS BLES, Seigneur de Moergestal, who resided eleven years in Ceylon in the time of the Dutch, says in one of his communications, that in herds of forty or fifty, enclosed in a single corral, there were frequently very young calves; and that “on ne pouvoit pas reconnaitre quelles etoient les meres de chacun de ces petits elephans, car tous ces jeunes animaux paroissent faire manse commune; ils tetent indistinctement celles des femelles de toute la troupe qui ont du lait, soit qu’elles aient elles-memes un petit en propre, soit qu’elles n’en aient point.”—­BUFFON, Suppl. a l’Hist. des Anim., vol. vi. p. 25.]

[Footnote 2:  WHITE, in his Natural History of Selborne, philosophising on the fact which had fallen under his own notice of this indiscriminate suckling of the young of one animal by the parent of another, is disposed to ascribe it to a selfish feeling; the pleasure and relief of having its distended teats drawn by this intervention.  He notices the circumstance of a leveret having been thus nursed by a cat, whose kittens had been recently drowned:  and observes, that “this strange affection was probably occasioned by that desiderium, those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had awakened in her breast; and by the complacency and ease she derived to herself from procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much distended with milk; till from habit she became as much delighted with this foundling as if it had been her real offspring.  This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance which grave historians, as well as the poets, assert of exposed children being sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that probably had lost their young.  For it is not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and Remus in their infant state should be nursed by a she wolf than that a poor little suckling leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody Grimalkin.”—­WHITE’S Selborne, lett. xx.]