170 MAMMALS

wonderful story of Pliny that an elephant chastised
for carelessness in dancing was known to practise its
steps alone in the moonlight, or modern showmen’s
versions of a similar desire to please, but there can
be no doubt that he has occasionally shown a power
of initiative that may not have been thought, but was
certainly the next thing to it. ‘Elephants are con-
spicuously social, it has been observed ; ‘the herds
are usually family parties, the mothers and young go
in front, the males bring up the rear, the reason
being that the young can walk within a few hours of
their birth, and the pace of the herd must be that of
its youngest and weakest member. When a herd
takes to the water—and elephants will on occasion
swim for six hours at a stretch—some of the young
ones are held up with the trunks of the mothers, while
others find a safer position on their mothers’ backs.
To a certain extent they have a language of their
own. Elephants make use of a great variety of sounds
in communicating with each other, and in expressing
their wants and feelings. Some are uttered by the
trunk, some by the throat. ‘An elephant, says Mr.
G. P. Sanderson, ‘rushing upon an assailant trumpets
shrilly with fury, but if enraged by wounds or other
causes, and brooding by itself, it expresses its anger
by a continued hoarse grumbling from the throat. Fear
is similarly expressed in a shrilly brassy trumpet,
or by a roar from the lungs. Pleasure by a continued
low squeaking through the trunk, or an almost in-
audible purring sound from the throat. Want—as a
calf calling its mother—is chiefly expressed by the
throat. A peculiar sound is made use of by elephants