on a blackboard. In Julian's work on "The Nature of Animals," the
eleventh chapter of the second book, he describes in detail the
wonderful performances of elephants at Rome, all of which he saw.
One passage is of peculiar interest to us, and the following has
been given as a translation: "...I saw them writing letters on
Roman tablets with their trunks, neither looking awry nor turning
aside. The hand, however, of the teacher was placed so as to be a
guide in the formation of the letters; and, while it was writing,
the animal kept its eye fixed down in an accomplished and scholar-
like manner."

I can conceive how an elephant may be taught that certain
characters represent certain ideas, and that they are capable of
intelligent combinations. The system and judgment and patient
effort which developed an active, educated, and even refined
intellect in Laura Bridgman--deaf, dumb and blind from birth--
ought certainly to be able to teach a clear-headed, intelligent
elephant to express at least _some_ of his thoughts in
writing.

I believe it is as much an act of murder to wantonly take the life
of a healthy elephant as to kill a native Australian or a Central-
African savage. If it is more culpable to kill an ignorant human
savage than an elephant, it is also more culpable to kill an
elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are both morally and
intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, and are, in my opinion,
as wholly destitute of that indefinable attribute called soul as
all the lower animals commonly are supposed to be.

If an investigator like Dr. Yerkes, and an educator like Dr. Howe,