Note 73 — Chapter V · Magic Rites connected with the Several Departments of Nature

“Elephants are said to be very frightened if they see a tree stump that has been felled at a great height from the ground, as some trees which have high spreading buttresses are cut, because they think that giants must have felled it, and as ordinary-sized men are more than a match for them they are in great dread of being caught by creatures many times more powerful than their masters. Some of the larger insects of the grasshopper kind are supposed to be objects of terror to elephants, while the particularly harmless little pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) is thought to be able to kill one of these huge beasts by biting its foot. The pangolin, by the bye, is quite toothless. Another method in which the pangolin attacks and kills elephants is by coiling itself tightly around the end of the elephant’s trunk, and so suffocating it. This idea is also believed in by the Singhalese, according to Mr. W. T. Hornaday’s Two Years in the Jungle.”73