Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1884 — Elephants on the Farm. [ARTICLE]

Elephants on the Farm.

In a private letter from a native of Hartford, Conn., who is now settled in India, the following extract about elephants for farm work is taken: I am pulling along here very well; managed to secure several hundred bushels of coffee more than I had estimated, and this is always pleasant. Value of our crop about $3,000. Never had the pleasure before of working with elephants. Sent away our crop with them this season. I did hot intrude myself too much upon their attention. You see I did not feel entitled to the honor of an intimate acquaintance. I treated them with great respect and deference, much the same as a street Arab does a policeman. I can’t get over my antipathy to that “trunk. ” The -Malay style of feeding elephants has certainly the merit of simplicity. When the day’s work is done they are turned eut into the jungle to find their own food; and so they go rambling about, all night, pulling and tearing away at any tree or shrub they fancy. When morning oomes, the drivers tracing them by their own apparent marks, put the driving hook over their ears and lead them off to work. Elephants seem to graze in a forest quite as contentedly as cattle in a pasture. ’Their ability to scramble up and down apparently impassable places is wonderful. I never saw any animal before show the intelligence to break a branch off a tree to fan away the flies. They help themselves to our coffee trees for this purpose.