Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/320

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THE ZOOLOGIST.

exhibited traits which, in safety to the public, demanded its destruction. Strangulation was the method selected as being the most merciful, and the following particulars are extracted from 'Nature':—"At the appointed hour those specially invited, among whom were several veterinary surgeons, Dr. Forbes, Director of the Liverpool Museum (to whom the body was generously to be handed over as a gift from Mr. Bailey to the museum), Dr. Roberts and Mr. Burnham, of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, found the Elephant standing quietly in one of the large tents, in line with some twenty to thirty others. A new Manilla rope was loosely wound three times around its neck, and its legs, fully stridden, were securely chained each to a post firmly driven into the ground alongside each limb. The animal was intentionally not isolated from its fellows, as it was feared that if separated by itself it would become restive and illtempered. The rope surrounding the beast's neck had one end secured to three strong pillars in the ground, some distance away and slightly in advance of the fore feet; and the other, which terminated in a loop, was hooked to a double series of pulleys, to the tackle of which ninety men were attached. When all was ready, the slack was gently, quietly, and without any apparent annoyance to the Elephant, which kept on eating hay, taken in till the coils round its neck were just taut. The word was then given, 'Walk away with the rope.' Amid perfect silence the welldisciplined company walked away with it without the least effort. So noiselessly and easily did everything work that, unless with foreknowledge of what was going to take place, one might have been present without realizing what the march of these men meant. The Elephant gave no sign of discomfort, either by trunk or tail; its fellows standing close by looked on in pachydermatous unconcern; and at the end of exactly thirty seconds it slowly collapsed, and lay down as if of its own accord. There was absolutely no struggle, and no motion, violent or otherwise, in any part of the body, nor the slightest indication of pain. In a few seconds more there was no response to the touch of its eyelashes or other parts of the eye, and this condition remained for a few minutes; but through, perhaps, the leakage into the chest of a small quantity of air, some slight sensitiveness returned to the eye, seen on touching its inner angle, though not the cornea. On slightly tightening up the rope, the chest gave one or two short throbs, and after six and a half minutes all movements ceased, and sensation was entirely lost; while at the end of thirteen minutes from the order to ' walk away,' the eye had become rigid and dim."


As we go to press we have heard with the greatest regret of the death of Mr. Osbert Salvin, the well-known ornithologist and entomologist. An obituary notice will appear in our next issue.