CHAPTER III.

CONDUCT IN CAPTIVITY.

The idea prevailed in ancient times, and obtains even at the present day, that the Indian elephant surpasses that of Africa in sagacity and tractability, and consequently in capacity for training, so as to render its services more available to man. There does not appear to me to be sufficient ground for this conclusion. It originated, in all probability, in the first impressions created by the accounts of the elephant brought back by the Greeks after the Indian expedition of Alexander, and above all by the descriptions of Aristotle, whose knowledge of the animal was derived exclusively from the East. The belief was perpetuated by later writers, especially Diodorus Siculus, who says the elephants of India excelled those of Africa in mental capacity not less than in magnitude and strength:—Οἳ ταῖς τε ἀλκαῖς καὶ ταῖς τοῦ σώματος ῥωμαῖς πολὺ προέχουσι τῶν ἐν τῇ Λιβύῃ γινομένων. (DIOD. SIC. ii. c. 16.) A long interval elapsed before the elephant of Africa, and its capabilities, became known in Europe. The first elephants brought to Greece by Antipater, were from India, as were also those introduced by Pyrrhus into Italy. Taught by this example, the Carthaginians undertook to employ African elephants in war. Jugurtha led them against Metellus, and Juba against Cæsar; but from inexperienced and deficient training, they proved less effective than the elephants of India,[135] and the historians of these times ascribed to inferiority of race that which was but the result of insufficient education.

It must, however, be remembered that the elephants which, at a later period, astonished the Romans by their sagacity, and whose performances in the amphitheatre have been described by Ælian and Pliny, were brought from Africa, and acquired their accomplishments from European instructors;[136] a sufficient proof that under equally favourable auspices the African species are capable of developing similar docility and powers with those of India. It is one of the facts from which the inferiority of the Negro race has been inferred, that they alone, of all the nations amongst whom the elephant is found, have never manifested ability to domesticate it; and even as regards the more highly developed races who inhabited the valley of the Nile, it is observable that the elephant is nowhere to be found amongst the animals figured on the monuments of ancient Egypt, whilst the camelopard, the lion, and even the hippopotamus are represented. And although in later times the knowledge of the art of training appears to have existed under the Ptolemies, and on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, it admits of no doubt that it was communicated by the more accomplished natives of India who had settled there.[137]

Another favourite doctrine of the earlier visitors to the East seems to me to be equally fallacious; PYRARD, BERNIER, PHILLIPE, THEVENOT, and other travellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, proclaimed the superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, in size, strength, and sagacity, above those of all other parts of India;[138] and TAVERNIER in particular is supposed to have stated that if a Ceylon elephant be introduced amongst those bred in any other place, by an instinct of nature they do him homage by laying their trunks to the ground, and raising them reverentially. This passage has been so repeatedly quoted in works on Ceylon that it has passed into an aphorism, and is always adduced as a testimony to the surpassing intelligence of the elephants of that island; although a reference to the original shows that Tavernier’s observations are not only fanciful in themselves, but are restricted to the supposed excellence of the Ceylon animal _in war_.[139] This estimate of the superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, if it ever prevailed in India, was not current there at a very early period; for in the _Ramayana_, which is probably the oldest epic in the world, the stud of Dasartha, the king of Ayodhya, was supplied with elephants from the Himalaya and the Vindhya Mountains.[140] I have had no opportunity of testing by personal observation the justice of the assumption; but from all that I have heard of the elephants of the continent, and seen of those of Ceylon, I have reason to conclude that the difference, if not imaginary, is exceptional, and must have arisen in particular and individual instances, from more judicious or elaborate instruction.

The earliest knowledge of the elephant in Europe and the West, was derived from the conspicuous position assigned to it in the wars of the East: in India, from the remotest antiquity, it formed one of the most picturesque, if not the most effective, features in the armies of the native princes.[141] It is more than probable that the earliest attempts to take and train the elephant, were with a view to military uses, and that the art was perpetuated in later times to gratify the pride of the eastern kings, and sustain the pomp of their processions.

An impression prevails even to the present day, that the process of training is tedious and difficult, and the reduction of a full-grown elephant to obedience, slow and troublesome in the extreme.[142] In both particulars, however, the contrary is the truth. The training as it prevails in Ceylon is simple, and the conformity and obedience of the animal are developed with singular rapidity. For the first three days, or till they will eat freely, which they seldom do in a less time, the newly-captured elephants are allowed to remain perfectly quiet; and, if practicable, a tame elephant is tied near them to give the wild ones confidence. Where many elephants are being trained at once, it is customary to put each new captive between the stalls of half-tamed ones, when it soon takes to its food. This stage being attained, training commences by placing tame elephants on either side. The “cooroowe vidahn,” or the head of the stables, stands in front of the wild elephants holding a long stick with a sharp iron point. Two men are then stationed one on either side, assisted by the tame elephants, and each holding a _hendoo_ or crook[143] towards the wild one’s trunk, whilst one or two others rub their hands over his back, keeping up all the while a soothing and plaintive chaunt, interlarded with endearing epithets, such as “ho! my son,” or “ho! my father,” or “my mother,” as may be applicable to the age and sex of the captive. The elephant is at first furious, and strikes in all directions with his trunk; but the men in front receiving all these blows on the points of their weapons, the extremity of the trunk becomes so sore that the animal curls it up close, and seldom afterwards attempts to use it offensively. The first dread of man’s power being thus established, the process of taking him to bathe between two tame elephants is greatly facilitated, and by lengthening the neck rope, and drawing the feet together as close as possible, the process of laying him down in the water is finally accomplished by the keepers pressing the sharp point of their hendoos over the backbone.

For many days the roaring and resistance which attend the operation are considerable, and it often requires the sagacious interference of the tame elephants to control the refractory wild ones. It soon, however, becomes practicable to leave the latter alone, only taking them to and from the stall by the aid of a decoy. This step lasts, under ordinary treatment, for about three weeks, when an elephant may be taken alone with his legs hobbled, and a man walking backwards in front with the point of the hendoo always presented to the elephant’s head, and a keeper with an iron crook at each ear. On getting into the water, the fear of being pricked on his tender back induces him to lie down directly on the crook being only held over him _in terrorem_. Once this point has been achieved, the further process of taming is dependent upon the disposition of the creature.[144]

The greatest care is requisite, and daily medicines are applied to heal the fearful wounds on the legs which even the softest ropes occasion. This is the great difficulty of training; for the wounds fester grievously, and months and sometimes years will elapse before an elephant will allow his feet to be touched without indications of alarm and anger.

The observation has been frequently made that the elephants most vicious and troublesome to tame, and the most worthless when tamed, are those distinguished by a thin trunk and flabby pendulous ears. The period of tuition does not appear to be influenced by the size or strength of the animals: some of the smallest give the greatest amount of trouble; whereas, in the instance of the two largest that have been taken in Ceylon within the last thirty years, both were docile in a remarkable degree. One in particular, which was caught and trained by Mr. Cripps, when Government agent, in the Seven Korles, fed from the hand the first night it was secured, and in a very few days evinced pleasure on being patted on the head.[145] There is none so obstinate, not even a _rogue_, that may not, when kindly and patiently treated, be eventually conciliated and reconciled.

The males are generally more unmanageable than the females, and in both an inclination to lie down to rest is regarded as a favourable symptom of approaching tractability, some of the most resolute having been known to stand for months together, even during sleep. Those which are the most obstinate and violent at first are the soonest and most effectually subdued, and generally prove permanently docile and submissive. But those which are sullen or morose, although they may not provoke chastisement by their viciousness, are always slower in being trained, and are rarely to be trusted in after-life.[146]

But whatever may be its natural gentleness and docility, the temper of an elephant is seldom to be implicitly relied on in a state of captivity and coercion. The most amenable are subject to occasional fits of stubbornness; and even after years of submission, irritability and resentment will sometimes unaccountably manifest themselves. It may be that the restraints and severer discipline of training have not been entirely forgotten; or that incidents which in ordinary health would be productive of no demonstration whatever, may lead, in moments of temporary illness, to fretfulness and anger.

The knowledge of this infirmity led to the popular belief recorded by PHILE, that the elephant had _two hearts_, under the respective influences of which it evinced ferocity or gentleness; subdued by the one to habitual tractability and obedience, but occasionally roused by the other to displays of rage and resistance.[147]

In the process of training, the presence of the tame ones can generally be dispensed with after two months, and the captive may then be ridden by the driver alone; and after three or four months he may, so far as regards docility, be entrusted with labour; but it is undesirable, and even involves the risk of its life, to work an elephant too soon; it has frequently happened that a valuable animal has laid down and died the first time it was tried in harness, from what the natives believe to be “broken heart,”—certainly without any cause inferable from injury or previous disease.[148] It is observable, that till a captured elephant begins to relish food, and grow fat upon it, he becomes so fretted by work, that it kills him in an incredibly short space of time.

The first employment to which an elephant is put is to tread clay in a brick-field, or to draw a waggon in double harness with a tame companion. But the work in which the display of sagacity renders his labour of the highest value, is that which involves the moving of heavy materials; and hence in dragging and piling timber, or conveying stones[149] for the construction of retaining walls and the approaches to bridges his services in an unopened country are of the utmost importance. When roads are to be constructed along the face of steep declivities, and the space is so contracted that risk is incurred either of the working elephant falling over the precipice or of rocks slipping down from above, not only are the measures to which he resorts the most judicious and reasonable that could be devised, but if urged by his keeper to adopt any other, he manifests a reluctance sufficient to show that he has balanced in his own mind the comparative advantages of each. An elephant appears on all occasions to comprehend the purpose and object that he is expected to promote, and hence he voluntarily executes a variety of details without any guidance whatever from his keeper. This is one characteristic in which this animal manifests a superiority over the horse; although an elephant’s strength in proportion to its weight is not so great as that of the latter.

His minute motions when engrossed by such operations, the activity of his eye, and the earnestness of his attitudes, can only be comprehended by being seen. In moving timber and masses of rock his trunk is the instrument on which he mainly relies, but those which have tusks turn them to good account. To get a weighty stone out of a hollow an elephant will kneel down so as to apply the pressure of his head to move it upwards, then steadying it with one foot till he can raise himself, he will apply a fold of his trunk to shift it to its place, and fit it accurately in position: this done, he will step round to view it on either side, and adjust it with due precision. He appears to gauge his task by his eye, and to form a judgment whether the weight be proportionate to his strength. If doubtful of his own power, he hesitates and halts, and if urged against his will, he roars and shows temper.

In clearing an opening through forest land, the power of the African elephant, and the strength ascribed to him by a recent traveller, as displayed in uprooting trees, have never been equalled or approached by anything I have seen of the elephant in Ceylon[150] or heard of them in India. Of course much must depend on the nature of the timber and the moisture of the soil: thus a strong tree on the verge of a swamp may be overthrown with greater ease than a small and low one in parched and solid ground. I have seen no “tree” deserving the name, nothing but jungle and brushwood, thrown down by the mere movement of an elephant without some special exertion of force. But he is by no means fond of gratuitously tasking his strength; and food being so abundant that he obtains it without an effort, it is not altogether apparent, even were he able to do so, why he should assail “the largest trees in the forest,” and encumber his own haunts with their broken stems; especially as there is scarcely anything which an elephant dislikes more than venturing amongst fallen timber.

A tree of twelve inches in diameter resisted successfully the most strenuous struggles of the largest elephant I ever saw led to it; and when directed by their keepers to clear away jungle, the removal of even a small tree or a healthy young coco-nut palm is a matter both of time and exertion. Hence the services of an elephant are of much less value in clearing a forest than in dragging and piling felled timber. But in the latter occupation he manifests an intelligence and dexterity which is surprising to a stranger, because the sameness of the operation enables the animal to go on for hours disposing of log after log, almost without a hint or direction from his attendant. For example, two elephants employed in piling ebony and satinwood in the yards attached to the commissariat stores at Colombo, were so accustomed to their work, that they were able to accomplish it with equal precision and with greater rapidity than if it had been done by dock-labourers. When the pile attained a certain height, and they were no longer able by their conjoint efforts to raise one of the heavy logs of ebony to the summit, they had been taught to lean two pieces against the heap, up the incline of which they gently rolled the remaining logs, and placed them trimly on the top.

It has been asserted that in their occupations “elephants are to a surprising extent the creatures of habit,”[151] that their movements are altogether mechanical, and that “they are annoyed by any deviation from their accustomed practice, and resent any constrained departure from the regularity of their course.” So far as my own observation goes, this is incorrect; and I am assured by officers of experience, that in regard to changing his treatment, his hours or his occupation, an elephant requires no more consideration than a horse, but exhibits the same pliancy and facility.

At one point, however, the utility of the elephant stops short. Such is the intelligence and earnestness he displays in work, which he seems to conduct almost without supervision, that it has been assumed[152] that he would continue his labour, and accomplish his given task, as well in the absence of his keeper as during his presence. But here his innate love of ease displays itself, and if the eye of his attendant be withdrawn, the moment he has finished the thing immediately in hand, he will stroll away lazily, to browse or enjoy the luxury of fanning himself and blowing dust over his back.

The means of punishing so powerful an animal is a question of difficulty to his attendants. Force being almost inapplicable, they try to work on his passions and feelings, by such expedients as altering the nature of his food or withholding it altogether for a time. On such occasions the demeanour of the creature will sometimes evince a sense of humiliation as well as of discontent. In some parts of India it is customary, in dealing with offenders, to stop their allowance of sugar canes or of jaggery; or to restrain them from eating their own share of fodder and leaves till their companions shall have finished; and in such cases the consciousness of degradation, betrayed by the looks and attitudes of the culprit, is quite sufficient to identify him, and to excite a feeling of sympathy and commiseration.

The elephant’s obedience to his keeper is the result of affection, as well as of fear; and although his attachment becomes so strong that an elephant in Ceylon has been known to remain out all night, without food, rather than abandon his mahout, lying intoxicated in the jungle, yet he manifests little difficulty in yielding the same submission to a new driver in the event of a change of attendants. This is opposed to the popular belief that “the elephant cherishes such an enduring remembrance of his old mahout, that he cannot easily be brought to obey a stranger.”[153] In the extensive establishments of the Ceylon Government, the keepers are changed without hesitation, and the animals, when equally kindly treated, are usually found to be as tractable and obedient to their new driver as to the old, so soon as they have become familiarised with his voice.

This is not, however, invariably the case; and Mr. Cripps, who had remarkable opportunities for observing the habits of the elephant in Ceylon, mentioned to me an instance in which one of a singularly stubborn disposition occasioned some inconvenience after the death of its keeper, by refusing to obey any other, till its attendants bethought them of a child about twelve years old, in a distant village, where the animal had been formerly picketed, and to whom it had displayed much attachment. The child was sent for; and on its arrival the elephant, as anticipated, manifested extreme satisfaction, and was managed with ease, till by degrees it became reconciled to the presence of a new superintendent.

It has been said that the mahouts die young, owing to some supposed injury to the spinal column from the peculiar motion of the elephant; but this remark does not apply to those in Ceylon, who are healthy, and as long-lived as other men. If the motion of the elephant be thus injurious, that of the camel must be still more so; yet we never hear of early death ascribed to this cause by the Arabs.

The voice of the keeper, with a very limited vocabulary of articulate sounds, serves almost alone to guide the elephant in his domestic occupations.[154] Sir EVERARD HOME, from an examination of the muscular fibres in the drum of an elephant’s ear, came to the conclusion, that notwithstanding the distinctness and power of his perception of sounds at a greater distance than other animals, he was insensible to their harmonious modulation and destitute of a musical ear.[155] But Professor HARRISON, in a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy in 1847, has stated that on a careful examination of the head of an elephant which he had dissected, he could “see no evidence of the muscular structure of the _membrana tympani_ so accurately described by Sir E. HOME.” Sir EVERARD’S deduction, I may observe, is clearly inconsistent with the fact that the power of two elephants may be combined by singing to them a measured chant, somewhat resembling a sailor’s capstan song; and in labour of a particular kind, such as hauling a stone with ropes, they will thus move conjointly a weight to which their divided strength would be unequal.[156]

Nothing can more strongly exhibit the impulse to obedience in the elephant, than the patience with which, at the order of his keeper, he swallows the nauseous medicines of the native elephant-doctors; and it is impossible to witness the fortitude with which, without shrinking, he submits to excruciating surgical operations for the removal of tumours and ulcers, without conceiving a vivid impression of his gentleness and intelligence. Dr. DAVY when in Ceylon was consulted about an elephant in the Government stud, which was suffering from a deep, burrowing sore in the back, just over the back-bone, and this had long resisted the treatment ordinarily employed. He recommended the use of the knife, that vent might be given to the accumulated matter, but no one of the attendants was competent to undertake the operation. “Being assured,” he continues, “that the creature would behave well, I undertook it myself. The elephant was not bound, but was made to kneel down at his keeper’s command—and with an amputating knife, using all my force, I made the incision required through the tough integuments. The elephant did not flinch, but rather inclined towards me when using the knife; and merely uttered a low, and as it were suppressed, groan. In short, he behaved as like a human being as possible, as if conscious (as I believe he was), that the operation was for his good, and the pain unavoidable.”[157]

Obedience to the orders of his keepers is not, however, to be assumed as the result of a uniform perception of the object to be attained by compliance; and we cannot but remember the touching incident which took place during the slaughter of the elephant at Exeter Change in 1826, when, after receiving ineffectually upwards of 120 balls in various parts of his body, he turned his face to his assailants on hearing the voice of his keeper, and knelt down at the accustomed word of command, so as to bring his forehead within view of the rifles.[158]

The working elephant is always a delicate animal, and requires watchfulness and care. As a beast of burden it is unsatisfactory; for although in point of mere strength there is scarcely any weight which could be conveniently placed on it that it could not carry, it is difficult to pack the load without causing abrasions that afterwards ulcerate. The skin is easily chafed by harness, especially in wet weather. During either long droughts or too much moisture, an elephant’s feet become liable to sores, that render it non-effective for months. Many attempts have been made to provide some protection for the sole of the foot, but from the extreme weight and the peculiar mode of planting the foot, they have all been unsuccessful. The eyes are also liable to frequent inflammations, and the skill of the native elephant-doctors, which has been renowned since the time of Ælian, is nowhere more strikingly displayed than in the successful treatment of such attacks.[159] In Ceylon, the murrain among the cattle is of frequent occurrence, and carries off great numbers of animals, wild as well as tame. In such visitations the elephants suffer severely, not only those at liberty in the forest, but those carefully tended in the Government stables. Out of a stud of about 40 attached to the department of the Commission of Roads, the deaths between 1841 and 1849 were on an average _four_ in each year, and this was nearly doubled in those years when murrain prevailed.

Of 240 elephants, employed in the public departments of the Ceylon Government, which died in twenty-five years, from 1831 to 1856, the length of time that each lived in captivity has only been recorded in the instances of 138. Of these there died:—

Duration of Captivity No. Male Female

Under 1 year 72 29 43 From 1 to 2 years 14 5 9 ” 2 ” 3 ” 8 5 3 ” 3 ” 4 ” 8 3 5 ” 4 ” 5 ” 3 2 1 ” 5 ” 6 ” 2 2 · ” 6 ” 7 ” 3 1 2 ” 7 ” 8 ” 5 2 3 ” 8 ” 9 ” 5 5 · ” 9 ” 10 ” 2 2 · ” 10 ” 11 ” 2 2 · ” 11 ” 12 ” 3 1 2 ” 12 ” 13 ” 3 · 3 ” 13 ” 14 ” · · · ” 14 ” 15 ” 3 1 2 ” 15 ” 16 ” 1 1 · ” 16 ” 17 ” 1 · 1 ” 17 ” 18 ” · · · ” 18 ” 19 ” 2 1 1 ” 19 ” 20 ” 1 · 1

Total 133 62 76

Of the 72 who died in one year’s servitude, 35 expired within the first six months of their captivity. During training, many elephants die in the unaccountable manner already referred to, of what the natives designate a _broken heart_.

On being first subjected to work, the elephant is liable to severe and often fatal swellings of the jaws and abdomen.[160]

From these causes there died, between 1841 and 1849 9 Of cattle murrain 10 Sore feet 1 Colds and inflammation 6 Diarrhœa 1 Worms 1 Of diseased liver 1 Injuries from a fall 1 General debility 1 Unknown causes 3

Of the entire, twenty-three were females and eleven males.

The ages of those that died could not be accurately stated, owing to the circumstance of their having been captured in corral. Two only were tuskers. Towards keeping the stud in health, nothing has been found so conducive as regularly bathing the elephants, and giving them the opportunity to stand with their feet in water, or in moistened earth.

Elephants are said to be afflicted with tooth-ache; their tushes have likewise been found with symptoms of internal perforation by some parasite, and the natives assert that, in their agony, the animals have been known to break them off short.[161] I have never heard of the teeth themselves being so affected, and it is just possible that the operation of shedding and the subsequent decay of the milk-tushes, may have in some instances been accompanied by incidents that gave rise to this story. At the same time the probabilities are in favour of its being true. CUVIER committed himself to the statement that the tusks of the elephant have no attachments to connect them with the pulp lodged in the cavity at their base, from which the peculiar modification of dentine, known as “ivory” is secreted;[162] and hence, by inference, that they would be devoid of sensation. But independently of the fact that ivory is permeated by tubes so fine that at their origin from the pulpy cavity they do not exceed the 1/15000 part of an inch in diameter, OWEN had the tusk and pulp of the great elephant which died at the Zoological Gardens in London in 1847 longitudinally divided, and found that, “although the pulp could be easily detached from the inner surface of the cavity, it was not without a certain resistance; and when the edges of the co-adapted pulp and tusk were examined by a strong lens, the filamentary processes from the outer surface of the former could be seen stretching, as they were drawn from the dentinal tubes, before they broke. These filaments are so minute, he adds, that to the naked eye the detached surface of the pulp seems to be entire; and hence CUVIER was deceived into supposing that there was no organic connexion between the pulp and the ivory. But if, as there seems no reason to doubt, these delicate nervous processes traverse the tusk by means of the numerous tubes already described, if attacked by caries the pain occasioned to the elephant would be excruciating.

As to maintaining a stud of elephants for the purposes to which they are now assigned in Ceylon, there may be a question on the score of prudence and economy. In the wild and unopened parts of the country, where rivers are to be forded, and forests are only traversed by jungle paths, their labour is of value, in certain contingencies, in the conveyance of stores, and in the earlier operations for the construction of fords and rough bridges of timber. But in more highly civilised districts, and wherever macadamised roads admit of the employment of horses and oxen for draught, I apprehend that the services of the elephant might, with advantage, be gradually reduced, if not altogether dispensed with.

The love of the elephant for coolness and shade renders it at all times more or less impatient of work in the sun, and every moment of leisure it can snatch is employed in covering its back with dust, or fanning itself to diminish the annoyance of the insects and heat. From the tenderness of the skin and its liability to sores, the labour in which the elephant can most advantageously be employed is that of draught; but the reluctance of horses to meet or pass them renders it difficult to work them with safety on frequented roads. Besides, were the full load which an elephant is capable of drawing, proportionally to its muscular strength, to be placed upon waggons of corresponding dimension, the injury to roads from the extra weight would be such that the wear and tear of the highways and bridges would prove too costly to be borne. On the other hand, by restricting it to a somewhat more manageable quantity, and by limiting the weight, as at present, to about _one ton and a half_, it is doubtful whether an elephant performs so much more work than could be done by a horse or by bullocks, as to compensate for the greater cost of his feeding and attendance.

Add to this, that from accidents and other causes, from ulcerations of the skin, and illnesses of many kinds, the elephant is so often invalided, that the actual cost of its labour, when at work, is very considerably enhanced. Exclusive of the salaries of higher officers attached to the Government establishments, and other permanent charges, the expenses of an elephant, looking only to the wages of its attendants and the cost of its food and medicines, varies from _three shillings to four shillings and sixpence_ per diem, according to its size and class.[163] Taking the average at three shillings and nine-pence, and calculating that hardly any individual works more than four days out of seven, the charge for each day so employed would amount to _six shillings and sixpence_. The keep per day of a powerful dray-horse, working five days in the week, would not exceed half-a-crown, and two such would unquestionably do more work than any elephant under the present system. I do not know whether it be from a comparative calculation of this kind that the strength of the elephant establishments in Ceylon has been gradually diminished of late years, but in the department of the Commissioner of Roads, the stud, which formerly numbered upwards of sixty elephants, was reduced, some years ago, to thirty-six, and is at present less than half that number.

The fallacy of the supposed reluctance of the elephant to breed in captivity has been demonstrated by many recent authorities; but with the exception of the birth of young elephants at Rome, as mentioned by ÆLIAN, the only instances that I am aware of their actually producing young under such circumstances, took place in Ceylon. Both parents had been for several years attached to the stud of the Commissioner of Roads, and in 1844 the female, whilst engaged in dragging a waggon, gave birth to a still-born calf. Some years before, an elephant that had been captured by Mr. Cripps, dropped a female calf, which he succeeded in rearing. As usual, the little one became the pet of the keepers; but as it increased in growth, it exhibited the utmost violence when thwarted; striking out with its hind-feet, throwing itself headlong on the ground, and pressing its trunk against any opposing object.

The duration of life in the elephant has been from the remotest times a matter of uncertainty and speculation. Aristotle says it was reputed to live from two to three hundred years,[164] and modern zoologists have assigned to it an age very little less; CUVIER[165] allots two hundred and DE BLAINVILLE[166] one hundred and twenty. The only attempt which I know of to establish a period historically or physiologically is that of FLEURENS, who has advanced an ingenious theory on the subject in his treatise “_De la Longévité Humaine_.” He assumes the sum total of life in all animals to be equivalent to five times the number of years requisite to perfect their growth and development;—and he adopts as evidence of the period at which growth ceases, the final consolidation of the bones with their _epiphyses_; which in the young consist of cartilages; but in the adult become uniformly osseous and solid. So long as the epiphyses are distinct from the bones, the growth of the animal is proceeding, but it ceases so soon as the consolidation is complete. In man, according to FLEURENS, this consummation takes place at 20 years of age, in the horse at 5, in the dog at 2; so that conformably to this theory the respective normal age for each would be 100 years for man, 25 for the horse, and 10 for a dog. As a datum for his conclusion, FLEURENS cites the instance of one young elephant in which, at 26 years old, the epiphyses were still distinct, whereas in another, which died at 31, they were firm and adherent. Hence he draws the inference that the period of completed solidification is thirty years, and consequently that the normal age of the elephant is _one hundred and fifty_.[167]

Amongst the Singhalese the ancient fable of the elephant attaining to the age of two or three hundred years still prevails; but the Europeans, and those in immediate charge of tame ones, entertain the opinion that the duration of life for about _seventy_ years is common both to man and the elephant; and that before the arrival of the latter period, symptoms of debility and decay ordinarily begin to manifest themselves. Still instances are not wanting in Ceylon of trained decoys that have lived for more than double the reputed period in actual servitude. One employed by Mr. Cripps in the Seven Korles was represented by the cooroowe people to have served the king of Kandy in the same capacity sixty years before; and amongst the papers left by Colonel Robertson (son to the historian of “Charles V.”), who held a command in Ceylon in 1799, shortly after the capture of the island by the British, I have found a memorandum showing that a decoy was then attached to the elephant establishment at Matura, which the records proved to have served under the Dutch during the entire period of their occupation (extending to upwards of one hundred and forty years); and it was said to have been found in the stables by the Dutch on the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1656.

It is perhaps from this popular belief in their almost illimitable age, that the natives generally assert that the body of a dead elephant is seldom or never to be discovered in the woods. And certain it is that frequenters of the forest with whom I have conversed, whether European or Singhalese, are consistent in their assurances that they have never found the remains of an elephant that had died a natural death. One chief, the Wannyah of the Trincomalie district, told a friend of mine, that once after a severe murrain, which had swept the province, he found the carcasses of elephants that had died of the disease. On the other hand, a European gentleman, who for thirty-six years without intermission has been living in the jungle, ascending to the summits of mountains in the prosecution of the trigonometrical survey, and penetrating valleys in tracing roads and opening means of communication,—one, too, who has made the habits of the wild elephant a subject of constant observation and study,—has often expressed to me his astonishment that after seeing many thousands of living elephants in all possible situations, he had never yet found a single skeleton of a dead one, except of those which had fallen by the rifle.[168]

It has been suggested that the bones of the elephant may be so porous and spongy as to disappear in consequence of an early decomposition; but this remark would not apply to the grinders or to the tusks; besides which, the inference is at variance with the fact, that not only the horns and teeth, but entire skeletons of deer, are frequently found in the districts inhabited by the elephant.

The natives, to account for this popular belief, declare that the survivors of the herd bury such of their companions as die a natural death.[169] It is curious that this belief was current also amongst the Greeks of the Lower Empire; and Phile, writing early in the fourteenth century, not only describes the younger elephants as tending the wounded, but as burying the dead:

Ὅταν δ’ ἐπιστῇ τῆς τελευτῆς ὁ χρόνος Κοινοῦ τέλους ἄμυναν ὁ ξένος φέρει.[170]

The Singhalese have a further superstition in relation to the close of life in the elephant: they believe that, on feeling the approach of dissolution, he repairs to a solitary valley, and there resigns himself to death. A native who accompanied Mr. Cripps, when hunting, in the forests of Anarajapoora, intimated to him that he was then in the immediate vicinity of the spot “_to which the elephants come to die_,” but that it was so mysteriously concealed, that although every one believed in its existence, no one had ever succeeded in penetrating to it. At the corral which I have described at Kornegalle, in 1847, Dehigame, one of the Kandyan chiefs, assured me it was the universal belief of his countrymen, that the elephants, when about to die, resorted to a valley in Saffragam, among the mountains to the east of Adam’s Peak, which was reached by a narrow pass with walls of rock on either side, and that there, by the side of a lake of clear water, they took their last repose.[171] It was not without interest that I afterwards recognised this tradition in the story of _Sinbad of the Sea_, who in his Seventh Voyage, after conveying the presents of Haroun al Raschid to the king of Serendib, is wrecked on his return from Ceylon, and sold as a slave to a master who employs him in shooting elephants for the sake of their ivory; till one day the tree on which he was stationed having been uprooted by one of the herd, he fell senseless to the ground, and the great elephant approaching wound his trunk around him and carried him away, ceasing not to proceed until he had taken him to a place where, his terror having subsided, _he found himself amongst the bones of elephants, and knew that this was their burial place_.[172] It is curious to find this legend of Ceylon in what has, not inaptly, been described as the “Arabian Odyssey” of Sinbad; the original of which evidently embodies the romantic recitals of the sailors returning from the navigation of the Indian Seas, in the middle ages,[173] which were current amongst the Mussulmans, and are reproduced in various forms throughout the tales of the _Arabian Nights_.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

As ÆLIAN’S work on _the Nature of Animals_ has never, I believe, been republished in any English version, and the passage in relation to the training and performance of elephants is so pertinent to the present inquiry, I venture to subjoin a translation of the 11th chapter of his 2nd book.

“Of the cleverness of the elephant I have spoken elsewhere, and likewise of the manner of hunting. I have mentioned these things, a few out of the many which others have stated; but for the present I purpose to speak of their musical feeling, their tractability, and facility in learning what it is difficult for even a human being to acquire, much less a beast, hitherto so wild:—such as to dance, as is done on the stage; to walk with a measured gait; to listen to the melody of the flute and to perceive the difference of sounds, that, being pitched low lead to a slow movement, or high to a quick one; all this the elephant learns and understands, and is accurate withal, and makes no mistake. Thus has Nature formed him not only the greatest in size, but the most gentle and the most easily taught. Now if I were going to write about the tractability and aptitude to learn amongst those of India, Æthiopia, and Libya, I should probably appear to be concocting a tale and acting the braggart, or to be telling a falsehood respecting the nature of the animal founded on a mere report, all which it behoves a philosopher, and most of all one who is an ardent lover of truth, not to do. But what I have seen myself, and what others have described as having occurred at Rome, this I have chosen to relate, selecting a few facts out of many, to show the particular nature of those creatures. The elephant when tamed is an animal most gentle and most easily led to do whatever he is directed. And by way of showing honour to time, I will first narrate events of the oldest date. Cæsar Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius, exhibited once a public show, wherein there were many full-grown elephants, male and female, and some of their breed born in this country. When their limbs were beginning to become firm, a person familiar with such animals instructed them by a strange and surpassing method of teaching; using only gentleness and kindness, and adding to his mild lessons the bait of pleasant and varied food. By this means he led them by degrees to throw off all wildness, and, as it were, to desert to a state of civilisation, conducting themselves in a manner almost human. He taught them neither to be excited on hearing the pipe, nor to be disturbed by the beat of drum, but to be soothed by the sounds of the reed, and to endure unmusical noises and the clatter of feet from persons while marching; and they were trained to feel no fear of a mass of men, nor to be enraged at the infliction of blows, not even when compelled to twist their limbs and to bend them like a stage dancer, and this too although endowed with strength and might. And there is in this a very noble addition to nature, not to conduct themselves in a disorderly manner and disobediently towards the instructions of man; for after the dancing-master had made them expert, and they had learnt their lessons accurately, they did not belie the labour of his instruction whenever a necessity and opportunity called upon them to exhibit what they had been taught. For the whole troop came forward from this and that side of the theatre, and divided themselves into parties; they advanced walking with a mincing gait and exhibiting in their whole body and persons the manners of a beau, clothed in the flowery dresses of dancers; and on the ballet-master giving a signal with his voice, they fell into line and went round in a circle, and if it were requisite to deploy they did so. They ornamented the floor of the stage by throwing flowers upon it, and this they did in moderation and sparingly, and straightway they beat a measure with their feet and kept time together.

“Now that Damon and Spintharus and Aristoxenus and Xenophilus and Philoxenus and others should know music excellently well, and for their cleverness be ranked amongst the few, is indeed a thing of wonder, but not incredible nor contrary at all to reason. For this reason, that a _man_ is a rational animal, and the recipient of mind and intelligence. But that a jointless animal (ἄναρθρον) should understand rhythm and melody, and preserve a gesture, and not deviate from a measured movement, and fulfil the requirements of those who laid down instructions, these are gifts of nature, I think, and a peculiarity in every way astounding. Added to these there were things enough to drive the spectator out of his senses; when the strewn rushes and other materials for beds on the ground were placed on the sand of the theatre, and they received stuffed mattresses such as belonged to rich houses, and variegated bed-coverings, and goblets were placed there very expensive, and bowls of gold and silver, and in them a great quantity of water; and tables were placed there of sweet-smelling wood and ivory very superb: and upon them flesh meats and loaves enough to fill the stomachs of animals the most voracious. When the preparations were completed and abundant, the banqueters came forward, six male and an equal number of female elephants; the former had on a male dress and the latter a female; and on a signal being given they stretched forward their trunks in a subdued manner, and took their food in great moderation, and not one of them appeared to be gluttonous greedy, or to snatch at a greater portion, as did the Persian mentioned by Xenophon. And when it was requisite to drink, a bowl was placed by the side of each; and inhaling with their trunks they took a draught very orderly; and then they scattered the drink about in fun; but not as in insult. Many other acts of a similar kind, both clever and astonishing, have persons described, relating to the peculiarities of these animals, and 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 scholarlike manner.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Ceylon_: An Account of the Island, Physical, Historical, and Topographical. 2 vols. 8vo. London, Longmans & Co. 1859

[2] _Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon._ London, 1861. See also _Ceylon, etc._ by Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT. London, 1860, vol. 1. pp. 7, 13, 85, 160, 183, &c.

[3] _Coup d’Œil général sur les Possessions Néerlandaises dans l’Inde Archipélagique._

[4] TEMMINCK, _Coup d’Œil, etc._ t. i. c. iv. p. 328; t. ii. c. iii. p. 91.

[5] _Proceed. Zool. Soc. London_, 1849, P. 144 _note_. The original description of TEMMINCK is as follows:

“Elephas Sumatranus, _Nob._ ressemble, par la forme générale du crâne, à l’éléphant du continent de l’Asie; mais la partie libre des intermaxillaires est beaucoup plus courte et plus étroite; les cavités nasales sont beaucoup moins larges; l’espace entre les orbites des yeux est plus étroit; la partie postérieure du crâne au contraire est plus large que dans l’espèce du continent.

“Les mâchelières se rapprochent, par la forme de leur couronne, plutôt de l’espèce asiatique que de celle qui est propre à l’Afrique; c’est-à-dire que leur couronne offre la forme de rubans ondoyés et non pas en losange; mais ces rubans sont de la largeur de ceux qu’on voit à la couronne des dents de l’éléphant d’Afrique; ils sont conséquemment moins nombreux que dans celui du continent de l’Asie. Les dimensions de ces rubans, dans la direction d’avant en arrière, comparées à celles prises dans la direction transversale et latérale, sont en raison de 3 ou 4 à 1; tandis que dans l’éléphant du continent elles sont comme 4 ou 6 à 1. La longueur totale de six de ces rubans, dans l’espèce nouvelle de Sumatra, ainsi que dans celle d’Afrique, est d’environ 12 centimètres, tandis que cette longueur n’est que de 8 à 10 centimètres dans l’espèce du continent de l’Asie.

“Les autres formes ostéologiques sont à peu près les mêmes dans les trois espèces; mais il y a différence dans le nombre des os dont le squelette se compose, ainsi que le tableau comparatif ci-joint l’éprouve.

“L’_elephas Africanus_ a 7 vertèbres du cou, 21 vert. dorsales, 3 lombaires, 4 sacrées et 26 caudales; 21 paires de côtes, dont 6 vraies et 15 fausses. L’_elephas Indicus_ a 7 vertèbres du cou, 19 dorsales, 3 lombaires, 5 sacrées et 34 caudales, 19 paires de côtes, dont 6 vraies et 3 fausses. L’_elephas Sumatranus_ a 7 vertèbres du cou, 20 dorsales, 3 lombaires, 4 sacrées et 34 caudales; 20 paires de côtes, dont 6 vraies et 14 fausses.

“Ces caractères ont été constatés sur trois squelettes de l’espèce nouvelle, un mâle et une femelle adultes et un jeune mâle. Nous n’avons pas encore été à même de nous procurer la dépouille de cette espèce.”

[6] _The Natural History Review_, January 1863, pp. 81, 96.

[7] M. AD. PICTET has availed himself of the love of the elephant for water, to found on it a solution of the long-contested question as to the etymology of the word “elephant,”—a term which, whilst it has passed into almost every dialect of the West, is scarcely to be traced in any language of Asia. The Greek ἐλέφας, to which we are immediately indebted for it, did not originally mean the animal, but, as early as the time of Homer, was applied only to its tusks, and signified _ivory_. BOCHART has sought for a Semitic origin, and seizing on the Arabic _fil_, and prefixing the article _al_, suggests _alfil_, akin to ἐλεφ; but rejecting this, BOCHART himself resorts to the Hebrew eleph, an “ox”—and this conjecture derives a certain degree of countenance from the fact that the Romans, when they obtained their first sight of the elephant in the army of Pyrrhus, in Lucania, called it the _Luca bos_. But the αντος is still unaccounted for: and POTT has sought to remove the difficulty by introducing the Arabic _hindi_, Indian, thus making _eleph hindi_, “_bos Indicus_.” The conversion of _hindi_ into αντος is an obstacle, but here the example of “tamarind” comes to aid; _tamar hindi_, the “Indian date,” which in mediæval Greek forms ταμἄρεντι. A theory of BENARY, that ἐλέφας might be compounded of the Arabic _al_, and _ibha_, a Sanskrit name for the elephant, is exposed to still greater etymological exception. PICTET’S solution is, that in the Sanskrit epics “the King of Elephants,” who has the distinction of carrying the god Indra, is called _airavata_ or _airavana_, a modification of _airavanta_ “son of the ocean,” which again comes from _iravat_, “abounding in water.” “Nous aurions donc ainsi, comme corrélatif du grec ἐλέφαντα, une ancienne forme, _âirâvanta_ ou _âilâvanta_, affaiblie plus tard en _âirâvata_ ou _âirâvana_.... On connaît la prédilection de l’éléphant pour le voisinage des fleuves, et son amour pour l’eau, dont l’abondance est nécessaire à son bien-être.” This Sanskrit name, PICTET supposes, may have been carried to the West by the Phœnicians, who were the purveyors of ivory from India; and, from the Greek, the Latins derived _elephas_, which passed into the modern languages of Italy, Germany, and France. But it is curious that the Spaniards acquired from the Moors their Arabic term for ivory, _marfil_, and the Portuguese _marfim_; and that the Scandinavians, probably from their early expeditions to the Mediterranean, adopted _fill_ as their name for the elephant itself, and _fil-bein_ for ivory; in Danish, _fils-ben_. (See _Journ. Asiat._ 1843, t. xliii. p. 133.) The Spaniards of South America call the palm which produces the vegetable ivory (_Phytelephas macrocarpa_) _Palma de marfil_, and the nut itself, _marfil vegetal_.

Since the above was written Gooneratné Modliar, the Singhalese Interpreter to the Supreme Court at Colombo, has supplied me with another conjecture, that the word elephant may possibly be traced to the Singhalese name of the animal, _alia_, which means literally, “the huge one.” _Alia_, he adds, is not a derivation from Sanskrit or Pali, but belongs to a dialect more ancient than either.

[8] ÆLIAN, _de Nat. Anim._ lib. xvi. c. 18; COSMAS INDICOPL. p. 128.

[9] LE BRUN, who visited Ceylon A. D. 1705, says that in the district round Colombo, where elephants are now never seen, they were then so abundant, that 160 had been taken in a single corral. (_Voyage_, _etc._ tom. ii. ch. lxiii. p. 331.)

[10] In some parts of Bengal, where elephants were formerly troublesome (especially near the wilds of Ramgur), the natives got rid of them by mixing a preparation of the poisonous Nepal root called _dakra_ in balls of grain, and other materials, of which the animal is fond. In Cuttack, above fifty years ago, mineral poison was laid for them in the same way, and the carcases of eighty were found which had been killed thus. (_Asiat. Res._ xv. 183.)

[11] The number of elephants has been similarly reduced throughout the south of India, and as in the advancing course of enclosure and cultivation, the area within which they will be driven must become more and more contracted, the conjecture is by no means problematical, that before many generations shall have passed away, the species may become extinct in Asia.

[12] The annual importation of ivory into Great Britain alone, for the last few years, has been about _one million_ pounds; which, taking the average weight of a tusk at sixty pounds, would require the slaughter of 8,333 male elephants.

But of this quantity the importation from Ceylon has generally averaged only five or six hundred weight; which, making allowance for the lightness of the tusks, would not involve the destruction of more than seven or eight in each year. At the same time, this does not fairly represent the annual number of tuskers shot in Ceylon, not only because a portion of the ivory finds its way to China and to other places, but because the chiefs and Buddhist priests have a passion for collecting tusks, and the finest and largest are to be found ornamenting their temples and private dwellings. The Chinese profess that for their exquisite carvings the ivory of Ceylon excels all other, both in density of texture and in delicacy of tint; but in the European market, the ivory of Africa, from its more distinct graining, and other causes, obtains a higher price.

[13] A writer in the _Indian Sporting Review_ for October 1857 says, “In Malabar a tuskless male elephant is rare; I have seen but two.” (P. 157.)

[14] The old fallacy is still renewed that the elephant sheds his tusks. ÆLIAN says he drops them once in ten years (lib. xiv. c. 5); and PLINY repeats the story, adding that, when dropped, the elephants hide them under ground (lib. viii.), whence SHAW says, in his _Zoology_, “they are frequently found in the woods,” and exported from Africa (vol. i. p. 213); and Sir W. JARDINE in the _Naturalist’s Library_ (vol. ix. p. 110), says, “the tusks are shed about the twelfth or thirteenth year.” This is erroneous: after losing the first pair, or, as they are called, the “milk tusks,” which drop in consequence of the absorption of their roots, when the animal is extremely young, the second pair acquire their full size, and become the “permanent tusks,” which are never shed.

[15] I have no means of ascertaining the dimensions of the largest tusks supposed to have been obtained in continental India. Of those that I have myself seen the greatest was taken from an elephant killed by Sir Victor Brooke Bart. at the Hassanoor Hills, in Coimbatore in 1863. It measured 8 feet in length, and when placed on end two men each 6 feet high can with ease stand side by side under the curved extremity. It is 1 ft. 6 in. in circumference at the base and weighs 110 lbs. This remarkable tusk is now in the museum at Colebrooke Park in the county Fermanagh. Its companion, owing to disease, is a distorted lump of ivory; an almost shapeless mass weighing 60 lbs. The life-long agony endured by the poor animal who bore it must have been frightful in the extreme. Notwithstanding the inferiority in weight of the Ceylon tusks, as compared with those of the elephant of India, it would, I think, be precipitate to draw the inference that the size of the former was uniformly and naturally less than that of the latter. The truth I believe to be, that if permitted to grow to maturity, the tusks of the one would, in all probability, equal those of the other; but, so eager is the search for ivory in Ceylon, that a tusker, when once observed in a herd, is followed up with such vigilant impatience, that he is almost invariably shot before attaining his full growth. General DE LIMA, when returning from the governorship of the Portuguese settlements at Mozambique, told me, in 1848, that he had been requested to procure two tusks of the largest size, and straightest possible shape, which were to be formed into a cross to surmount the high altar of the cathedral at Goa: he succeeded in his commission, and sent two, one of which was 180 pounds’ and the other 170 pounds’ weight, with the slightest possible curve. In a periodical entitled _The Friend_, published in Ceylon, it is stated in the volume for 1837 that the officers belonging to the ships Quorrah and Alburhak, engaged in the Niger Expedition, were shown by a native king two tusks, each two feet and a half in circumference at the base, eight feet long, and weighing upwards of 200 pounds. (Vol. i. p. 225.) BRODERIP, in his _Zoological Recreations_, p. 255, says a tusk of 350 pounds’ weight was sold at Amsterdam, but he does not quote his authority. PETHERICK in his _Account of Egypt, Soudan_, &c. says that in Central Africa the size of tusks differs in different latitudes, those towards the north being shorter, thicker, less hollow, and heavier than those of the south. Thus a tusk from the Nouaer, Dinka, or Shilook tribes will weigh 120 lbs., while one from Bari would weigh only 70 lbs. or 80 lbs. “Indeed,” he adds, “I have known a tusk from Nouaer to weigh 185 lbs., its length being _seven feet two inches_, and its greatest thickness at the base _nine_ inches.” (PETHERICK, p. 418.) Sir S. Baker, in his explorations of the White Nile, saw monster tusks of 160 lbs.; and one in the possession of a trader weighed 172 lbs. (_The Albert Nyanza_, vol. i. p. 273.)

[16] _Menageries_, _etc._ published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, vol. i. p. 68: “The Elephant,” ch. iii. It will be seen that I have quoted repeatedly from this volume, because it is the most compendious and careful compilation with which I am acquainted of the information previously existing regarding the elephant. The author incorporates no speculations of his own, but has most diligently and agreeably arranged all the facts collected by his predecessors. The story of antipathy between the elephant and rhinoceros is probably borrowed from ÆLIAN _de Nat._ lib. xvii. c. 44.

[17] “The _Correspondencia_ of Madrid gives the following account of a fight between a Ceylon elephant and two bulls, which took place at Saragossa:—‘The elephant was walking quietly about the arena when the first bull was released and rushed at it with all his might. The elephant received his antagonist with great coolness, and threw him down with the utmost ease. The bull rose again and made two more attacks, which the elephant resented by killing him with his tusks. The conqueror did not seem in the least excited, but quietly drank some water offered by his keeper, and ate several ears of Indian corn. A second bull was then released, and in a few minutes suffered the same fate as the first.’” (_Globe_, Nov. 9, 1864.) The _Times_ says the elephant killed it “_with a thrust_ of his tusks.”

[18] _Menageries_, _etc._: “The Elephant,” ch. iii. In the Anglo-Saxon _Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem_, which has been printed by COCKAYNE in his _Narratiunculæ Anglice conscriptæ_, the belief in the alleged antipathy of the elephant to swine is embodied in the text and is thus rendered in the Latin version: “Pervenimus demum ad silvas Indorum ultimas; ubi cum castra collocavissemus, ceperamus velle epulari sub nocte hora xi; cum subito pabulatores lignatoresque exanimes nunciabant, ut celeriter arma caperemus, venire e silvis elephantorum immensas greges ad expugnanda castra. Imperavi ergo Thessalicis equitibus ut ascenderent equos, _secumque tollerent sues_, quorum grunnitus timere bestias noveram, et occurrere quam primum elephantis jussi ... nec mora trepidantes elephanti conversi sunt. Quieta nox fuit usque ad lucem.” (P. 58.) Another allusion to the same legendary incident will be found in the _Lyfe of Alisaunder_, one of the most ancient English romances, reprinted by WEBER in his _Metrical Romances of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries_.

“Forth went the kyng thennes with hy; Of the forme-ward he herd grete cry For hy weren assailed of olifauntz. The kyng highed, and his sergeauntz: Ac, so I fynde on the booke, By Porus conseil _hogges hy took_ _And beten them so they shrightte_: The olifauntz away hem dightte; For hy ne have so mychel drade Of nothing as of hogges grade.”

WEBER, vol. i. p. 237.

[19] This peculiarity was noticed by the ancients, and is recorded by Herodotus: κάμηλον ἵππος φοβέεται, καὶ οὐκ ἀνέχεται οὔτε τὴν ἰδέην αὐτῆς ὁρέων οὔτε τὴν ὀδμὴν ὀσφραινόμενος. (Herod. i. 80.) Camels have long been bred by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, at his establishment near Pisa, and even there the same instinctive dislike to them is manifested by the horse, which it is necessary to train and accustom to their presence in order to avoid accidents. Mr. BRODERIP mentions, that, “when the precaution of such training has not been adopted, the sudden and dangerous terror with which a horse is seized in coming unexpectedly upon one of them is excessive.”—_Note-book of a Naturalist_, ch. iv. p. 113.

[20] Major ROGERS was many years the chief civil officer of the Ceylon Government in the district of Ouvah, where he was killed by lightning, 1845.

[21] “Quidam etiam cum equis silvestribus pugnant. Sæpe unus elephas cum sex equis committitur; atque ipse adeo interfui cum unus elephas duos equos cum primo impetu protinus prosternerit;—injecta enim jugulis ipsorum longa proboscide, ad se protractos, dentibus porro comminuit ac protrivit.” (_Angli cujusdam in Cambayam navigatio._ DE BRY, _Coll._ _etc._ vol. iii. ch. xvi. p. 31.)

[22] To account for the impatience manifested by the elephant at the presence of a dog, it has been suggested that he is alarmed lest the latter should attack _his feet_, a portion of his body of which the elephant is peculiarly careful. A tame elephant has been observed to regard with indifference a spear directed towards his head, but to shrink timidly from the same weapon when pointed at his feet.

[23] A writer in the _Indian Sporting Review_ for October 1857 says a male elephant was killed by two others close to his camp: “the head was completely smashed in; there was a large hole in the side, and the abdomen was ripped open. The latter wound was given probably after it had fallen.” (P. 175.)

[24] In the Third Book of Maccabees, which is not printed in our Apocrypha, but appears in the series in the Greek Septuagint, the author, in describing the persecution of the Jews by Ptolemy Philopater, B.C. 210, states that the king swore vehemently that he would send them into the other world, “foully trampled to death by the knees and feet of elephants” (πέμψειν εἰς ᾅδην ἐν γόνασι καὶ ποσὶ θηρίων ᾑκισμένους. 3 Mac. v. 42). ÆLIAN makes the remark, that elephants on such occasions use their _knees_ as well as their feet to crush their victim. (_Hist. Anim._ viii. 10.)

[25] The _Hastisilpe_, a Singhalese work which treats of the “Science of Elephants,” enumerates amongst those which it is not desirable to possess, “the elephant which will fight with a stone or a stick in his trunk.”

[26] Among other eccentric forms, an elephant was seen in 1844, in the district of Bintenne, near Friar’s-Hood Mountain, one of whose tusks was so bent that it took what sailors term a “round turn,” and then resumed its curved direction as before. In the Museum of the College of Surgeons, London, there is a specimen, No 2757, of a _spiral_ tusk.

[27] Since the foregoing remarks were written relative to the undefined use of tusks to the elephant, I have seen a speculation on the same subject in Dr. HOLLAND’S “_Constitution of the Animal Creation, as expressed in structural appendages_;” but the conjecture of the author leaves the problem scarcely less obscure than before. Struck with the mere _supplemental_ presence of the tusks, the absence of all apparent use serving to distinguish them from the _essential_ organs of the creature, Dr. HOLLAND concludes that their production is a process incident, but not ancillary, to other important ends, especially connected with the vital functions of the trunk and the marvellous motive powers inherent to it; his conjecture is, that they are “a species of safety valve of the animal œconomy,”—and that “they owe their development to the predominance of the senses of touch and smell, conjointly with the muscular motions of which the exercise of these is accompanied.” “Had there been no proboscis,” he thinks, “there would have been no supplementary appendages,—the former creates the latter.” (Pp. 246, 271.)

[28] See _Notes on the Natural History of Ceylon_ by Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT, p. 60. Sir S. BAKER adds as a distinctive feature of the African elephant that its “back is concave while that of the Indian variety is convex.” (_The Albert Nyanza_, vol. 1. p. 274.)

[29] A native of rank informed me, that “the tail of a high-caste elephant will sometimes touch the ground, but such are very rare.”

[30] This is confirmed by the fact that the scar of the ancle wound, occasioned by the rope on the legs of those which have been captured by noosing, presents precisely the same tint when thoroughly healed.

[31] _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxviii. p. 254, A.D. 433.

[32] PALLEGOIX, _Siam_, _etc._ vol. i. p. 152.

[33] _Mahawanso_, ch. xviii. p. 111. The Hindu sovereigns of Orissa, in the middle ages, bore the style of _Gajapati_, “powerful in elephants.” (_Asiat. Res._ xv. 253.)

[34] Herod. l. i. c. 189.

[35] Ibid. l. ii. c. 38.

[36] ARMANDI, _Hist. Milit. des Eléphants_, lib. ii. c. x. p. 380. HORACE mentions a white elephant as having been exhibited at Rome: “Sive elephas albus vulgi converteret ora.” (HOR. _Ep._ ii. 196.)

[37] After writing the above, I was permitted by the late Dr. HARRISON, of Dublin, to see some accurate drawings of the brain of an elephant, which he had the opportunity of dissecting in 1847; and on looking to that of the base, I have found a remarkable verification of the information which I had previously collected in Ceylon.

The small figure A is the ganglion of the fifth nerve, showing the small motor and large sensitive portion.

The _olfactory lobes_, from which the olfactory nerves proceed, are large, whilst the _optic and muscular nerves of the orbit are singularly small_ for so vast an animal; and one is immediately struck by the prodigious size of the fifth nerve, which supplies the proboscis with its exquisite sensibility, as well as by the great size of the motor portion of the seventh, which supplies the same organ with its power of movement and action.

[38] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” p. 27.

[39] Major ROGERS. An account of this singular adventure will be found in the _Ceylon Miscellany_ for 1842, vol. i. p. 221.

[40] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” ch. iii. p. 68.

[41] ARISTOTLE, _De Anim._ lib. iv. c. 9, ὁμοῖον σάλπιγγι. See also PLINY, lib. x. ch. cxiii. A manuscript of the 15th century in the British Museum, containing the romance of “_Alexander_,” which is probably of the fifteenth century, is interspersed with drawings illustrative of the strange animals of the East. Amongst them are two elephants, whose trunks are literally in the form of _trumpets with expanded mouths_. See WRIGHT’S _Archæological Album_, p. 176, and M.S. Reg. 15, e. vi. Brit. Mus.

[42] PALLEGOIX, in his _Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam_, adverts to a sound produced by the elephant when weary: “quand il est fatigué, _il frappe la terre avec sa trompe_, et en tire un son semblable à celui du cor.” (Tom. i. p. 151.)

[43] For an explanation of the term “rogue” as applied to an elephant, see p. 47.

[44] _Natural History of Animals._ By Sir JOHN HILL, M.D. London, 1748-52, p. 565. A probable source of these false estimates is mentioned by a writer in the _Indian Sporting Review_ for Oct. 1857. “Elephants were measured formerly, and even now, by natives, as to their height, by throwing a rope over them, the ends brought to the ground on each side, and half the length taken as the true height. Hence the origin of elephants fifteen and sixteen feet high. A rod held at right angles to the measuring rod, and parallel to the ground, will rarely give more than ten feet, the majority being under nine.” (P. 159)

[45] SHAW’S _Zoology_. Lond. 1806. vol. i. p. 216; ARMANDI, _Hist. Milit. des Eléphants_, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2.

[46] WOLF’S _Life and adventures_, _etc._ p. 164. Wolf was a native of Mecklenburg, who arrived in Ceylon about 1750, as chaplain in one of the Dutch East Indiamen, and having been taken into the Government employment, he served for twenty years at Jaffna, first as Secretary to the Governor, and afterwards in an office the duties of which he describes to be the examination and signature of the “writings which served to commence a suit in any of the courts of justice.” His book embodies a truthful and generally accurate account of the northern portion of the island, with which alone he was conversant, and his narrative gives a curious insight into the policy of the Dutch Government, and of the condition of the natives under their dominion.

[47] DENHAM’S _Travels_, _etc._ 4to, p. 220. Fossil remains of the Indian elephant have been discovered at Jabalpur, showing a height of fifteen feet. (_Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng._ vi.) Professor ANSTED in his _Ancient World_, p. 197, says he was informed by Dr. Falconer “that out of eleven hundred elephants from which the tallest were selected and measured with care, on one occasion in India, there was not one whose height equalled eleven feet.”

[48] _Vulgar Errors_, book iii. chap. 1. The earliest English writer who promulgated this error was ALEXANDER NECKHAM, who in his treatise _De Naturis Rerum_, composed in the 12th century, quotes Cassiodorus and accepts his assertion that the elephant has no joints, chap. cxliii. NECKHAM repeats the statement in his poem _De Laudibus Divinæ Sapientiæ_, v. 47.

[49] Machlis (said to be derived from α, priv., and κλίνω, _cubo_, quod non cubat). “Moreover in the island of Scandinavia there is a beast called _Machlis_, that hath neither ioynt in the hough, nor pasternes in his hind legs, and therefore he never lieth down, but sleepeth leaning to a tree, wherefore the hunters that lie in wait for these beasts cut downe the trees while they are asleepe, and so take them; otherwise they should never be taken, they are so swift of foot that it is wonderful.” (PLINY, _Natur. Hist._ Transl. Philemon Holland, book viii. ch. xv. p. 200.)

[50] “Sunt item quæ appellantur _Alces_. Harum est consimilis capreis figura, et varietas pellium; sed magnitudine paulo antecedunt, mutilæque sunt cornibus, _et crura sine nodis articulisque habent_; neque quietis causa procumbunt; neque, si quo afflictæ casu considerunt, erigere sese aut sublevare possunt. His sunt arbores pro cubilibus; ad eas sese applicant, atque ita, paulum modo reclinatæ, quietem capiunt, quarum ex vestigiis cum est animadversum a venatoribus, quo se recipere consueverint, omnes eo loco, aut a radicibus subruunt aut accidunt arbores tantum, ut summa species earum stantium relinquatur. Huc cum se consuetudine reclinaverint, infirmas arbores pondere affligunt, atque una ipsæ concidunt.” (CÆSAR, _De Bello Gall._ lib. vi. ch. xxvii.)

The same fiction was extended by the early Arabian travellers to the rhinoceros, and in the MS. of the voyages of the “_Two Mahometans_,” it is stated that the rhinoceros of Sumatra “n’a point d’articulation au genou ni à la main.” (_Relations des Voyages_, _etc._ Paris, 1845, vol. i. p. 29.)

[51] EVELYN, who was a contemporary and friend of Sir Thomas Browne, observes in his diary, August 13, 1641, on arriving at Rotterdam, “here I first saw an elephant: it was a beast of a monstrous size, yet as flexible and nimble in the joints, contrary to the vulgar tradition, as could be imagined from so prodigious a bulk and strange fabric.” (Vol. i. p. 20.)

[52] In his _Natural History_, ARISTOTLE speaks of Ctesias as οὐκ ὣν ἀξιόπιστος. (L. viii. c. 27.)

[53] “When an animal moves progressively an hypothenuse is produced, which is equal in power to the magnitude that is quiescent, and to that which is intermediate. But since the members are equal, it is necessary that the member which is quiescent should be inflected either in the knee or in the incurvation, _if the animal that walks is without knees_. It is possible, however, for the leg to be moved, when not inflected, in the same manner as infants creep; and there is an ancient report of this kind about elephants, which is not true, for such animals as these, _are moved in consequence of an inflection taking place either in their shoulders or hips_.” (ARISTOTLE, _De Ingressu Anim._ ch. ix. Taylor’s Transl.)

[54] ARISTOTLE, _De Animal_, lib. ii. ch. i. It is curious that Taylor, in his translation of this passage, was so strongly imbued with the “grey-headed errour,” that in order to elucidate the somewhat obscure meaning of Aristotle, he has actually interpolated the text with the exploded fallacy of Ctesias, and after the word reclining to sleep, has inserted the words “_leaning against some wall or tree_,” which are not to be found in the original.

[55] Ζῷον δὲ ἄναρθρον συνιέναι καὶ ῥυθμοῦ καὶ μέλους, καὶ φυλάττειν σχῆμα φύσεως δῶρα ταῦτα ἅμα καὶ ἰδιότης καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐκπληκτική. (ÆLIAN, _De Nat. Anim._ lib. ii. cap. xi.)

[56] EGINHARD, _Vita Karoli_, c. xvi. and _Annales Francorum_, A. D. 810.

[57] “Sed idem Julius, unum de elephantibus mentiens, falso loquitur; dicens elephantem nunquam jacere; dum ille sicut bos certissime jacet, ut populi communiter regni Francorum elephantem, in tempore Imperatoris Karoli, viderunt. Sed, forsitan, ideo hoc de elephante ficte æstimando scriptum est, eo quod genua et suffragines sui nisi quando jacet, non palam apparent.” (DICUILUS, _De Mensura Orbis Terræ_, c. vii.)

[58] _Cotton MSS._ NERO. D. i. fol. 168, b.

[59] _Arundel MSS._ No. 292, fol. 4, &c. It has been printed in the _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, vol. i. p. 208, by Mr. WRIGHT, to whom I am indebted for the following rendering of the passage referred to:—

in water ge sal stonden in water to mid side ðat wanne hire harde tide ðat ge ne falle niðer nogt ðat it most in hire ðogt for he ne haven no lið ðat he mugen risen wið, etc.

“They will stand in the water, in water up to the middle of the side, that when it comes to them hard, they may not fall down: that is most in their thought, for they have no joint to enable them to rise again. How he resteth him this animal, when he walketh abroad, hearken how it is here told. For he is all unwieldy, forsooth he seeks out a tree, that is strong and steadfast, and leans confidently against it, when he is weary of walking. The hunter has observed this, who seeks to ensnare him, where his usual dwelling is, to do his will; saws this tree and props it in the manner that he best may, covers it well that he (the elephant) may not be on his guard. Then he makes thereby a seat, himself sits alone and watches whether his trap takes effect. Then cometh this unwieldy elephant, and leans him on his side, rests against the tree in the shadow, and so both fall together, if nobody be by when he falls, he roars ruefully and calls for help, roars ruefully in his manner, hopes he shall through help rise. Then cometh there one (elephant) in haste, hopes he shall cause him to stand up; labours and tries all his might, but he cannot succeed a bit. He knows then no other remedy, but roars with his brother, many and large (elephants) come there in search, thinking to make him get up, but for the help of them all he may not get up. Then they all roar one roar, like the blast of a horn or the sound of bell; for their great roaring a young one cometh running, stoops immediately to him, puts his snout under him, and asks the help of them all; this elephant they raise on his legs: and thus fails this hunter’s trick, in the manner that I have told you.”

[60] One of the most venerable authorities by whom the fallacy was transmitted to modern times was PHILIP DE THAUN, who wrote, about the year 1121, A. D. his _Livre des Créatures_, dedicated to Adelaide of Louvaine, Queen of Henry I. of England. In the copy of it printed by the Historical Society of Science in 1841, and edited by Mr. WRIGHT, the following passage occurs:—

“Et Ysidres nus dit ki le elefant descrit,

* * * * *

Es jambes par nature nen ad que une jointure, Il ne pot pas gesir quant il se vol dormir, Ke si cuchet estait par sei nen leverait; Pur çeo li stot apuier, el lui del cucher, U à arbre u à mur, idunc dort aseur. E le gent de la terre, ki li volent con quere, Li mur enfunderunt, u le arbre enciserunt; Quant li elefant vendrat, ki s’i apuierat, La arbre u le mur carrat, e il tribucherat; Issi faiterement le parnent cele gent.”

P. 100.

[61] _Troilus and Cressida_, act ii. sc. 3. A. D. 1609.

[62] _Progress of the Soul_, A. D. 1633.

[63] Sir T. BROWNE, _Vulgar Errors_, A. D. 1646.

[64] RANDAL HOME’S _Academy of Armory_, A. D. 1671. HOME only perpetuated the error of GUILLIM, who wrote his _Display of Heraldry_ in A. D. 1610; wherein he explains that the elephant is “so proud of his strength that he never bows himself to any (_neither indeed can he_), and when he is once down he cannot rise up again.” (Sec. iii. ch. xii. p. 147.)

[65] THOMSON’S _Seasons_, A. D. 1728.

[66] So little is the elephant inclined to lie down in captivity, and even after hard labour, that the keepers are generally disposed to suspect illness when he betakes himself to this posture. PHILE, in his poem _De Animalium Proprietate_, attributes the propensity of the elephant to sleep on his legs, to the difficulty he experiences in rising to his feet:

Ὀρθοστάδην δὲ καὶ καθεύδει παννύχως Ὅτ’ οὺκ ἀναστῆσαι μὲν εὐχερῶς πέλει.

But this is a misapprehension.

[67] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” ch. i.

Sir CHARLES BELL, in his essay on _The Hand and its Mechanism_, which forms one of the “Bridgewater Treatises,” has exhibited the reasons deducible from organisation, which show the incapacity of the elephant to _spring_ or _leap_ like the horse and other animals whose structure is designed to facilitate agility and speed. In them the various bones of the shoulder and fore limbs, especially the clavicle and humerus, are set at such an angle, that the shock in descending is modified, and the joints and sockets protected from the injury occasioned by concussion. But in the elephant, where the weight of the body is immense, the bones of the leg, in order to present solidity and strength to sustain it, are built in one firm and perpendicular column; instead of being placed somewhat obliquely at their points of contact. Thus whilst the force of the weight in descending is broken and distributed by this arrangement in the case of the horse; it would be so concentrated in the elephant as to endanger every joint from the toe to the shoulder.

[68] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” ch. ii.

[69] Dr. HOOKER, in describing the ascent of the Himalayas, says, the natives in making their paths despise all zigzags, and run in straight lines up the steepest hill faces; whilst “the elephant’s path is an excellent specimen of engineering—the opposite of the native track,—for it winds judiciously.” (_Himalayan Journal_, vol. i. ch. iv.)

[70] _Ceylon Observer_, March 1865.

[71] Since the above passage was written, I have seen in the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, vol. xiii. pt. ii. p. 916, a paper upon this subject, illustrated by the subjoined diagram.

The writer says, “an elephant descending a bank of too acute an angle to admit of his walking down it direct, (which, were he to attempt, his huge body, soon disarranging the centre of gravity, would certainly topple over,) proceeds thus. His first manœuvre is to kneel down close to the edge of the declivity, placing his chest to the ground: one fore leg is then cautiously passed a short way down the slope; and if there is no natural protection to afford a firm footing, he speedily forms one by stamping into the soil if moist, or kicking out a footing if dry. This point gained, the other fore leg is brought down in the same way; and performs the same work, a little in advance of the first; which is thus at liberty to move lower still. Then, first one and then the second of the hind legs is carefully drawn over the side, and the hind feet in turn occupy the resting-places previously used and left by the fore ones. The course, however, in such precipitous ground is not straight from top to bottom, but slopes along the face of the bank, descending till the animal gains the level below. This an elephant has done, at an angle of 45 degrees, carrying a _howdah_, its occupant, his attendant, and sporting apparatus; and in a much less time than it takes to describe the operation.” I have observed that an elephant in descending a declivity uses his knees, on the side next the bank; and his feet on the lower side only.

[72] A correspondent of Buffon, M. MARCELLUS BLES, Seigneur de Moergestal, who resided eleven years in Ceylon in the time of the Dutch, says in one of his communications, that in herds of forty or fifty, enclosed in a single corral, there were frequently very young calves; and that “on ne pouvoit pas reconnoître quelles étoient les mères de chacun de ces petits éléphans, car tous ces jeunes animaux paroissent faire manse commune; ils têtent indistinctement celles des femelles de toute la troupe qui ont du lait, soit qu’elles aient elles-mêmes un petit en propre, soit qu’elles n’en aient point.” (BUFFON, _Suppl. à l’Hist. des Anim._ vol. vi. p. 25.)

[73] WHITE, in his _Natural History of Selbourne_, philosophising on the fact which had fallen under his own notice of this indiscriminate suckling of the young of one animal by the parent of another, is disposed to ascribe it to a selfish feeling; the pleasure and relief of having its distended teats drawn by this intervention. He notices the circumstance of a leveret having been thus nursed by a cat, whose kittens had been recently drowned; and observes that “this strange affection was probably occasioned by that desiderium, those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had awakened in her breast; and by the complacency and ease she derived to herself from procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much distended with milk; till from habit she became as much delighted with this foundling as if it had been her real offspring. This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance which grave historians, as well as the poets, assert of exposed children being sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that probably had lost their young. For it is not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and Remus in their infant state should be nursed by a she wolf than that a poor little suckling leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody Grimalkin.” (WHITE’S _Selborne_, lett. xx.) General SLEAMAN in his narrative of a journey through Oude gives some remarkable narratives of children suckled by wolves and found associating with their cubs.

[74] The term “rogue” is scarcely sufficiently accounted for by supposing it to be the English equivalent for the Singhalese word _Hora_. In that very curious book, the _Life and Adventures of_ JOHN CHRISTOPHER WOLF, _late principal Secretary at Jaffnapatam in Ceylon_, see _ante_, note, p. 31, the author says, when a male elephant in a quarrel about the females “is beat out of the field and obliged to go without a consort, he becomes furious and mad, killing every living creature, be it man or beast; and in this state is called _ronkedor_, an object of greater terror to a traveller than a hundred wild ones.” (P. 142.) In another passage, p. 164, he is called _runkedor_, and I have seen it spelt elsewhere _ronquedue_. WOLF does not give “_ronkedor_” as a term peculiar to that section of the island; but both there and elsewhere, it is obsolete at the present day, unless it be open to conjecture that the modern term “rogue” is a modification of _ronquedue_.

[75] BUCHANAN, in his _Survey of Bhagulpore_, p. 503, says that solitary males of the wild buffalo, “when driven from the herd by stronger competitors for female society, are reckoned very dangerous to meet with; for they are apt to wreak their vengeance on whatever they meet, and are said to kill annually three or four people.” LIVINGSTONE relates the same of the solitary hippopotamus, which becomes soured in temper, and wantonly attacks the passing canoes. (_Travels in South Africa_, p. 231.)

[76] Letter from Major SKINNER.

[77] This peculiarity was known in the middle ages, and PHILE, writing in the fourteenth century, says, that such is his _preference_ for muddy water that the elephant _stirs it_ before he drinks.

Ὕδωρ δὲ πίνει συγχυθὲν πρὶν ἂν πίνοι, Τὸ γὰρ διειδὲς ἀκριβῶς διαπτύει.

PHILE _de Eleph._ i. 144.

[78] A tame elephant, when taken by his keepers to be bathed, and to have his skin washed and rubbed, lies down on his side, pressing his head to the bottom under water, with only the top of his trunk protruded, to breathe.

[79] BRODERIP’S _Zoological Recreations_, p. 259.

[80] For observing the osteology of the elephant, materials are of course abundant in the indestructible remains of the animal: but the study of the intestines, and the dissection of the softer parts by comparative anatomists in Europe, have been up to the present time beset by difficulties. These arise not alone from the rarity of subjects, but even in cases where elephants have died in these countries, decomposition interposes, and before the thorough examination of so vast a body can be satisfactorily completed, the great mass falls into putrefaction.

The principal English authorities are _An Anatomical Account of the Elephant accidentally burnt in Dublin_, by A. MOLYNEUX, A.D. 1696; which is probably a reprint of a letter on the same subject in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, addressed by A. Moulin to Sir William Petty, Lond. 1682. There are also some papers communicated to Sir Hans Sloane, and afterwards published in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of the year 1710, by Dr. P. BLAIR, who had an opportunity of dissecting an elephant which died at Dundee in 1708. The latter writer observes that, “notwithstanding the vast interest attaching to the elephant in all ages, yet has its body been hitherto very little subjected to anatomical inquiries;” and he laments that the rapid decomposition of the carcase, and other causes, had interposed obstacles to the scrutiny of the subject he was so fortunate as to find access to.

In 1723 Dr. WM. STUCKLEY published _Some Anatomical Observations made upon the Dissection of an Elephant_; but each of the above essays is necessarily unsatisfactory, and little has since been done to supply their defects. One of the latest and most valuable contributions to the subject, is a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy, on the 18th of Feb. 1847, by Professor HARRISON, who had the opportunity of dissecting an Indian elephant which died of acute fever; but the examination, so far as he has made it public, extends only to the cranium, the brain, and the proboscis, the larynx, trachea, and œsophagus. An essential service would be rendered to science if some sportsman in Ceylon, or some of the officers connected with the elephant establishment there, would take the trouble to forward the carcase of a young one to England in a state fit for dissection.

_Postscriptum._—I am happy to say that a young elephant, carefully preserved in spirits, has recently been obtained in Ceylon, and forwarded to Prof. Owen, of the British Museum, by the joint exertions of M. DIARD and Major SKINNER. An opportunity has thus been afforded of which science will reap the advantage, of devoting a patient attention to the internal structure of this most interesting animal.

[81] ARISTOTLE noticed a peculiarity in the intestinal configuration of the elephant such as gave it the appearance of having four stomachs. _De Anim. Hist._ l; ii. c. 17.

[82] The passage as quoted by BUFFON from the _Mémoires_ is as follows:—“L’estomac avoit peu de diamètre; il en avoit moins que le colon, car son diamètre n’étoit que de quatorze pouces dans la partie la plus large; il avoit trois pieds et demi de longueur: l’orifice supérieur étoit à peu près aussi éloigné du pylore que du fond du grand cul-de-sac qui se terminoit en une pointe composée de tuniques beaucoup plus épaisses que celles du reste de l’estomac; il y avoit au fond du grand cul-de-sac plusieurs feuillets épais d’une ligne, larges d’un pouce et demi, et disposés irrégulièrement; le reste des parois intérieures étoit percé de plusieurs petits trous et par de plus grands qui correspondoient à des grains glanduleux.” (BUFFON, _Hist. Nat._ vol. xi. p. 109.)

[83] “L’extrémité voisine du cardiaque se termine par une poche très-considérable et doublée à l’intérieure de quatorze valvules orbiculaires qui semblent en faire une espèce de division particulière.” (CAMPER, _Description anatomique d’un Eléphant mâle_, p. 37, tabl. IX.)

[84] “The elephant has another peculiarity in the internal structure of the stomach. It is longer and narrower than that of most animals. The cuticular membrane of the œsophagus terminates at the orifice of the stomach. At the cardiac end, which is very narrow and pointed at the extremity, the lining is thick and glandular, and is thrown into transverse folds, of which five are broad and nine narrow. That nearest the orifice of the œsophagus is the broadest, and appears to act occasionally as a valve, so that the part beyond may be considered as an appendage similar to that of the peccary and the hog. The membrane of the cardiac portion is uniformly smooth; that of the pyloric is thicker and more vascular.” (_Lectures on Comparative Anatomy_, by Sir EVERARD HOME, Bart. 4to. Lond. vol. i. p. 155. The figure of the elephant’s stomach is given in his _Lectures_, vol. ii. plate xviii.)

[85] A similar arrangement, with some modifications, has more recently been found in the llama of the Andes, which, like the camel, is used as a beast of burden in the Cordilleras of Chili and Peru; but both these and the camel are _ruminants_, whilst the elephant belongs to the Pachydermata.

[86] _Proceed. Roy. Irish. Acad._ vol. iv. p. 133.

[87] _Ayeen Akbery_, transl. by GLADWIN, vol. i. pt. i. p. 147.

[88] One of the Indian names for the elephant is _duipa_, which signifies “to drink twice.” (AMANDI, p. 513.) Can this have reference to the peculiarity of the stomach for retaining a supply of water? Or has it merely reference to the habit of the animal to fill his trunk before transferring the water to his mouth?

[89] The buffalo and the humped cattle of India, which are used for draught and burden, have, I believe, a development somewhat more conspicuous than in the rest of their congeners, of the organisation of the reticulum which enables the ruminants generally to endure thirst, and abstain from water, but nothing in them approaches in singularity of character to the distinct cavities in the stomach exhibited by the three animals above alluded to.

[90] For an explanation of this term, see Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT’S _Ceylon_, _etc._ vol. i. p. 498.

[91] “One of the strongest instincts which the elephant possesses, is this which impels him to experiment upon the solidity of every surface which he is required to cross.”—_Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” vol. i. pp. 17, 19, 66.

[92] WOLF’S _Life and Adventures_, p. 151.

[93] _Private Letter_ from Dr. DAVY, author of _An Account of the Interior of Ceylon_.

[94] The _Colombo Observer_ for March 1858, contains an offer of a reward of twenty-five guineas for the destruction of an elephant which infested the Rajawallé coffee plantation, in the vicinity of Kandy. Its object seemed to be less the search for food, than the satisfying of its curiosity and the gratification of its passion for mischief. Mr. TYTLER, the proprietor, states that it frequented the jungle near the estate, whence it was its custom to sally forth at night for the pleasure of pulling down buildings and trees, “and it seemed to have taken a spite at the pipes of the waterworks, the pillars of which it several times broke down—its latest fancy being to wrench off the taps.” This elephant has since been shot.

[95] CUVIER, _Règne Animal_. “Les Mammifères,” p. 280.

[96] _Table Talk_, p. 63.

[97] The elephant is believed by the Singhalese to express his uneasiness by his voice, on the approach of _rain_; and the Tamils have a proverb,—“_Listen to the elephant, rain is coming._”

[98] Yokes borne on the shoulder with a package at each end.

[99] The tutelary spirit of the sacred mountain, Adam’s Peak.

[100] The Singhalese hold the belief, that twigs taken from one bush and placed on another growing close to a pathway, ensure protection to travellers from the attacks of wild animals, and especially of elephants. Can it be that the latter avoid the path, on discovering this evidence of the proximity of recent passengers?

[101] A rogue elephant.

[102] Woman’s robe.

[103] The figured cloth worn by men.

[104] To persons like myself, who are not addicted to what is called “sport,” the statement of these wholesale slaughters is calculated to excite surprise and curiosity as to the nature of a passion that impels men to self-exposure and privation, in a pursuit which presents nothing but the monotonous recurrence of scenes of blood and suffering. Sir S. BAKER, who has recently published, under the title of “_The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon_,” an account of his exploits in the forest, gives us the assurance that “_all real sportsmen are tender-hearted men, who shun cruelty to an animal, and are easily moved by a tale of distress_,” and that although man is naturally bloodthirsty, and a beast of prey by instinct, yet that the true sportsman is distinguished from the rest of the human race by his “_love of nature and of noble scenery_.” In support of this pretension to a gentler nature than the rest of mankind, the author proceeds to attest his own abhorrence of cruelty by narrating the sufferings of an old hound, which, although “toothless,” he cheered on to assail a boar at bay, but the poor dog recoiled “covered with blood, cut nearly in half, with a wound fourteen inches in length, from the lower part of the belly, passing up the flank, completely severing the muscles of the hind leg, and extending up the spine; his hind leg having the appearance of being nearly off.” In this state, forgetful of the character he had so lately given of the true sportsman, as a lover of nature and a hater of cruelty, he encouraged “the poor old dog,” as he calls him, to resume the fight with the boar, which lasted for an hour, when he managed to call the dogs off; and, perfectly exhausted, the mangled hound crawled out of the jungle with several additional wounds, including a severe gash in his throat. “He fell from exhaustion, and we made a litter with two poles and a horsecloth to carry him home.” (P. 314.) If such were the habitual enjoyments of this class of sportsmen, their motiveless massacres would admit of no manly justification. In comparison with them one is disposed to regard almost with favour the exploits of a hunter like Major ROGERS, who is said to have applied the value of the ivory obtained from his encounters towards the purchase of his successive regimental commissions, and had, therefore, an object, however disproportionate, in his slaughter of 1,400 elephants.

One gentleman in Ceylon, not less distinguished for his genuine kindness of heart, than for his marvellous success in shooting elephants, avowed to me that the eagerness with which he found himself impelled to pursue them had often excited surprise in his own mind; and although he had never read the theory of Lord Kames, or the speculations of Vicesimus Knox, he had come to the conclusion that the passion thus excited within him was a remnant of the hunter’s instinct, with which man was originally endowed to enable him, by the chase, to support existence in a state of nature, and which, though rendered dormant by civilisation, had not been utterly eradicated.

This theory is at least more consistent and intelligible than the “love of nature and scenery,” sentimentally propounded by the author quoted above.

[105] The vulnerability of the elephant in this region of the head was known to the ancients, and PLINY, describing a combat of elephants in the amphitheatre at Rome, says, that one was slain by a single blow, “pilum sub oculo adactum, in vitalia capitis venerat.” (Lib. viii. c. 7.) Notwithstanding the comparative facility of access to the brain afforded at this spot, an ordinary leaden bullet is not certain to penetrate, and frequently becomes flattened. The hunters, to counteract this, are accustomed to harden the ball, by the introduction of a small portion of type-metal along with the lead.

[106] “The head is so peculiarly formed that the ball either passes over the brain, or lodges in the immensely solid bones and cartilages that contain the roots of the tusks.... The brain of the African species, he says, rests upon a plate of bone exactly above the roots of the upper grinders and is thus wonderfully protected from a front shot, as it lies so low that the ball passes over it when the elephant raises his head, which he invariably does when in anger, until close to the object of his attack.... I had always held the opinion that the African elephant might be killed with the same facility as that of Ceylon _by a forehead shot_; but I have found by much experience that I was entirely wrong and that although by chance an African elephant may be killed by the front shot, it is the exception to the rule.” (_The Albert Nyanza_, vol. i. p. 277.)

[107] In Mr. GORDON CUMMING’S account of a _Hunter’s Life in South Africa_, there is a narrative of his pursuit of a wounded elephant which he had lamed by lodging a ball in its shoulder-blade. It limped slowly towards a tree, against which it leaned itself in helpless agony, whilst its pursuer seated himself in front of it, in safety, to _boil his coffee_, and observe its sufferings. The story is continued as follows:—“Having admired him for a considerable time, _I resolved to make experiments on vulnerable points_; and approaching very near I fired several bullets at different parts of his enormous skull. He only acknowledged the shots by a salaam-like movement of his trunk, with the point of which he gently touched the wounds with a striking and peculiar action. Surprised and shocked at finding that I was only prolonging the sufferings of the noble beast, which bore its trials with such dignified composure, I resolved to finish the proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened fire upon him from the left side, aiming at the shoulder. I first fired _six_ shots with the two-grooved rifle, which must have eventually proved mortal. After which I fired _six_ shots at the same part with the Dutch six-pounder. _Large tears now trickled from his eyes, which he slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame shivered convulsively, and falling on his side, he expired._” (Vol. ii. p. 10.)

In another place, after detailing the manner in which he assailed a poor animal, he says: “I was loading and firing as fast as could be, sometimes at the head, sometimes behind the shoulder, until my elephant’s fore-quarter was a mass of gore; notwithstanding which he continued to hold on, leaving the grass and branches of the forest scarlet in his wake.... Having fired _thirty-five rounds_ with my two-grooved rifle, I opened upon him with the Dutch six-pounder, and when forty bullets had perforated his hide, he began for the first time to evince signs of a dilapidated constitution.” The disgusting description is closed thus: “Throughout the charge he repeatedly cooled his person with large quantities of water, which he ejected from his trunk over his sides and back, and just as the pangs of death came over him, he stood trembling violently beside a thorn tree, and kept pouring water into his bloody mouth until he died, when he pitched heavily forward with the whole weight of his fore-quarters resting on the points of his tusks. The strain was fair, and the tusks did not yield; but the portion of his head in which the tusks were embedded, extending a long way above the eye, yielded and burst with a muffled crash.” (_Ib._ vol. ii. pp. 4, 5.)

[108] _The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon_; by Sir S. BAKER, pp. 8, 9. “Next to a rogue in ferocity, and even more persevering in the pursuit of her victim, is a female elephant.” But he appends the significant qualification, “_when her young one has been killed_.” (_Ibid._ p. 13.)

[109] _The Rifle and the Hound_, p. 13.

[110] _Menageries_ _etc._ “The Elephant,” ch. i. p. 21.

[111] _System of Phrenology_, by GEO. COMBE, vol. i. p. 256.

[112] Private letter from Capt. PHILIP PAYNE GALLWEY.

[113] Some years ago an elephant which had been wounded by a native, near Hambangtotte, pursued the man into the town, followed him along the street, trampled him to death in the bazaar before a crowd of terrified spectators, and succeeded in making good its retreat to the jungle.

[114] SHAW, in his _Zoology_, asserts that an elephant can run as swiftly as a horse can gallop. London, 1800-6, vol. i. p. 216.

[115] The device of taking them by means of pitfalls still prevails in India; but in addition to the difficulty of providing against that caution with which the elephant is supposed to reconnoitre suspicious ground, it has the further disadvantage of exposing him to injury from bruises and dislocations in his fall. Still it was the mode of capture employed by the Singhalese, and so late as 1750 WOLF relates that the native chiefs of the Wanny, when capturing elephants for the Dutch, made “pits some fathoms deep in those places whither the elephant is wont to go in search of food, across which were laid poles covered with branches and baited with the food of which he is fondest, making towards which he finds himself taken unawares. Thereafter being subdued by fright and exhaustion, he was assisted to raise himself to the surface by means of hurdles and earth, which he placed underfoot as they were thrown down to him, till he was enabled to step out on solid ground, when the noosers and decoys were in readiness to tie him up to the nearest tree.” (See WOLF’S _Life and Adventures_, p. 152.) Shakspeare appears to have been acquainted with the plan of taking elephants in pitfalls: Decius, encouraging the conspirators, reminds them of Cæsar’s taste for anecdotes of animals, by which he would undertake to lure him to his fate:

“For he loves to hear That unicorns may be betrayed with trees, And bears with glasses: _elephants with holes_.”

JULIUS CÆSAR, Act ii. Scene I.

[116] KNOX’S _Historical Relation of Ceylon_, A. D. 1681, part i. ch. vi. p. 21.

[117] Previous to the death of the female elephant in the Zoological Gardens, in the Regent’s Park, in 1851, Mr. MITCHELL, the Secretary, caused measurements to be accurately made, and found the statement of the Singhalese hunters to be strictly correct, the height at the shoulders being precisely twice the circumference of the fore foot. In an African elephant killed by Sir S. Baker, this proportion did not hold good, as the circumference of the fore foot was 4 feet 11-1/4 inches, and the height at the shoulder 10 feet 6-1/2 inches. (BAKER, _The Albert Nyanza_, vol. ii. p. 10.)

[118] Major SKINNER, the Chief Officer at the head of the Commission of Roads, in Ceylon, in writing to me, mentions an anecdote illustrative of the daring of the Panickeas. “I once saw,” he says, “a very beautiful example of the confidence with which these fellows, from their knowledge of the elephants, meet their worst defiance. It was in Neuera-Kalawa; I was bivouacking on the bank of a river, and had been kept out so late that I did not get to my tent until between 9 and 10 at night. On our return towards it we passed several single elephants making their way to the nearest water, but at length we came upon a large herd that had taken possession of the only road by which we could pass, and which no intimidation would induce to move off. I had some Panickeas with me; they knew the herd, and counselled extreme caution. After trying every device we could think of for a length of time, a little old Moorman of the party came to me and requested we should all retire to a distance. He then took a couple of chules (flambeaux of dried wood, or coco-nut leaves), one in each hand, and waving them above his head till they flamed out fiercely, he advanced at a deliberate pace to within a few yards of the elephant who was acting as leader of the party, and who was growling and trumpeting in his rage, and flourished the flaming torches in his face. The effect was instantaneous; the whole herd dashed away in a panic, bellowing, screaming, and crushing through the underwood, whilst we availed ourselves of the open path to make our way to our tents.”

[119] In the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1701, there is “An Account of the taking of Elephants in Ceylon, by Mr. STRACHAN, a Physician who lived seventeen years there,” in which the author describes the manner in which they were shipped by the Dutch, at Matura, Galle, and Negombo. A piece of strong sail-cloth having been wrapped round the elephant’s chest and stomach he was forced into the sea between two tame ones, and there made fast to a boat. The tame ones then returned to land, and he swam after the boat to the ship, where tackle was reeved to the sail-cloth, and he was hoisted on board.

“But a better way has been invented lately,” says Mr. Strachan; “a large flat-bottomed vessel is prepared, covered with planks like a floor; so that this floor is almost of a height with the key. Then the sides of the key and the vessel are adorned with green branches, so that the elephant sees no water till he is in the ship.” (_Phil. Trans._ vol. xxiii. No. 227, p. 1051.)

[120] VALENTYN, _Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien_, ch. xv. p. 272.

[121] It is thus spelled by WOLF, in his _Life and Adventures_, p. 144. _Corral_ is at the present day a household word in South America, and especially in La Plata, to designate an _enclosure for cattle_.

[122] See Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT’S _Ceylon_ vol. I. pt. III. ch. xii. p. 415.

[123] Another enormous mass of gneiss is called the Kuruminiagalla, or the Beetle-rock, from its resemblance in shape to the back of that insect, and hence is said to have been derived the name of the town, _Kuruna-galle_ or Korne-galle.

[124] FORBES quotes a Tamil conveyance of land, the purchaser of which is to “possess and enjoy it as long as the sun and the moon, the earth and its vegetables, the mountains and the River Cauvery exist.” (_Oriental Memoirs_, vol. ii. chap. ii.) It will not fail to be observed, that the same figure was employed in Hebrew literature as a type of duration—“They shall fear thee, _so long as the sun and moon endure_; throughout all generations.” (Psalm lxxii. 5, 17.)

[125] _Pentaptera paniculata._

[126] _Entada pursætha._

[127] Fire, the sound of a horn, and the grunting of a boar are the three things which the Greeks, in the middle ages, believed the elephant specially to dislike:

Πῦρ δὲ πτοεῖται καὶ κριὸν κερασφόρον, Καὶ τῶν μονιῶν τὴν βοὴν τὴν ἀθρόαν.

PHILE, _Expositio de Elephante_, 1. 177.

[128] The other elephant, a fine tusker, which belonged to Dehigam Raté-mahat-meya, continued in extreme excitement throughout all the subsequent operations of the capture, and at last, after attempting to break its way into the corral, shaking the bars with its forehead and tusks, it went off in a state of frenzy into the jungle. A few days after the Aratchy went in search of it with a female decoy, and watching its approach, sprang fairly on the infuriated beast, with a pair of sharp hooks in his hands, which he pressed into tender parts in front of the shoulder, and thus held the elephant firmly till chains were passed over its legs, and it permitted itself to be led quietly away.

[129] In some of the elephant hunts conducted in the southern provinces of Ceylon by the earlier British Governors, as many as 170 and 200 elephants were secured in a single corral, of which a portion only were taken out for the public service, and the rest shot, the motive being to rid the neighbourhood of them, and thus protect the crops from destruction. On the occasion here described, the object being to secure only as many as were required for the Government stud, it was not sought to entrap more than could conveniently be attended to and trained after capture.

[130] This elephant is since dead; she grew infirm and diseased, and died at Colombo in 1848. Her skeleton is now in the Museum of the Natural History Society at Belfast.

[131] The fact of the elephant exhibiting timidity, on having a long rod pointed towards him, was known to the Romans; and PLINY, quoting from the annals of PISO, relates, that in order to inculcate contempt for want of courage in the elephant, they were introduced into the circus during the triumph of METELLUS, after the conquest of the Carthaginians in Sicily, and _driven round the area by workmen holding blunted spears_,—“Ab operariis hastas præpilatas habentibus, per circum totum actos.” (_Nat. Hist._ lib. viii. c. 6.)

[132] “In a corral, to be on a tame elephant, seems to insure perfect immunity from the attacks of the wild ones. I once saw the old chief Mollegodde ride in amongst a herd of wild elephants, on a small elephant; so small that the Adigar’s head was on a level with the back of the wild animals: I felt very nervous, but he rode right in among them, and received not the slightest molestation.”—_Letter from Major_ SKINNER.

[133] The surprising faculty of vultures for discovering carrion, has been a subject of much speculation, as to whether it be dependent on their power of sight or of scent. It is not, however, more mysterious than the unerring certainty and rapidity with which some of the minor animals, and more especially insects, in warm climates congregate around the offal on which they feed. Circumstanced as they are, they must be guided towards their object mainly if not exclusively by the sense of smell; but that which excites astonishment is the small degree of odour which seems to suffice for the purpose; the subtlety and rapidity with which it traverses and impregnates the air; and the keen and quick perception with which it is taken up by the organs of those creatures. The instance of the scavenger beetles has been already alluded to; the promptitude with which they discern the existence of matter suited to their purposes, and the speed with which they hurry to it from all directions; often from distances as extraordinary, proportionably, as those traversed by the eye of the vulture. In the instance of the dying elephant referred to above, life was barely extinct when the flies, of which not one was visible but a moment before, arrived in clouds and blackened the body by their multitude; scarcely an instant was allowed to elapse for the commencement of decomposition; no odour of putrefaction could be discerned by us who stood close by; yet some peculiar smell of mortality, simultaneously with parting breath, must have summoned them to the feast. Ants exhibit an instinct equally surprising. I have sometimes covered up a particle of refined sugar with paper on the centre of a polished table; and counted the number of minutes which would elapse before it was fastened on by the small black ants of Ceylon, and a line formed to lower it safely to the floor. Here was a substance which, to our apprehension at least, is altogether inodorous, and yet the quick sense of smell must have been the only conductor of the ants. It has been observed of those fishes which travel overland on the evaporation of the ponds in which they live, that they invariably march in the direction of the nearest water, and even when captured, and placed on the floor of a room, their efforts to escape are always made towards the same point. Is the sense of smell sufficient to account for this display of instinct in them? or is it aided by special organs in the case of the others? Dr. MCGEE, formerly of the ROYAL NAVY, writing to me on the subject of the instant appearance of flies in the vicinity of dead bodies, says: “In warm climates they do not wait for death to invite them to the banquet. In Jamaica I have again and again seen them settle on a patient, and hardly to be driven away by the nurse, the patient himself saying, ‘Here are these flies coming to eat me ere I am dead.’ At times they have enabled the doctor, when otherwise he would have been in doubt as to his prognosis, to determine whether the strange apyretic interval occasionally present in the last stage of yellow fever was the fatal lull or the lull of recovery; and ‘What say the flies?’ has been the settling question. Among many, many cases during a long period I have seen but one recovery after the assembling of the flies. I consider the foregoing as a confirmation of smell being the guide even to the attendants, a cadaverous smell has been perceived to arise from the body of a patient twenty-four hours before death.”

[134] This is precisely the action ascribed by ARISTOTLE to the elephant, when levelling palm trees. _De Anim. Hist._ 1. ix. c. 2.

[135] ARMANDI, _Hist. Milit. des Eléphants_, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2. It is an interesting fact, noticed by ARMANDI, that the elephants figured on the coins of Alexander and the Seleucidæ invariably exhibit the characteristics of the Indian type, whilst those on Roman medals can at once be pronounced African, from the peculiarities of the convex forehead and expansive ears.—_Ibid._ liv. i. cap. i. p. 3.

ARMANDI has, with infinite industry, collected from original sources a mass of curious information relative to the employment of elephants in ancient warfare, which he has published under the title of _Histoire Militaire des Eléphants depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à l’introduction des armes à feu_. Paris, 1843.

[136] ÆLIAN, lib. ii. cap. ii.

[137] See SCHLEGEL’S Essay on the Elephant and the Sphynx, _Classical Journal_, No. lx. Although the trained elephant nowhere appears upon the monuments of the Egyptians, the animal was not unknown to them, and ivory and elephants are figured on the walls of Thebes and Karnac amongst the spoils of Thothmes III. and the tribute paid to Rameses I. The Island of Elephantine, in the Nile, near Assouan (Syene) is styled in hieroglyphical writing “The Land of the Elephant;” but as it is a mere rock, it probably owes its designation to its form. See Sir GARDNER WILKINSON’S _Ancient Egyptians_, vol. i. pl. iv.; vol. v. p. 176. Above the first cataract of the Nile are two small islands, each bearing the name of Phylæ;—quære, is the derivation of this word at all connected with the Arabic term _fil_? See _ante_, p. 4, note. The elephant figured in the sculptures of Nineveh is universally as wild, not domesticated.

[138] This is merely a reiteration of the statement of ÆLIAN, who ascribes to the elephants of Taprobane a vast superiority in size, strength, and intelligence, above those of continental India: Καὶ ὁι δέ γε νησιῶται ἐλέφαντες τῶν ἠπειρωτῶν ἀλκιμωτεροί τε τὴν ῥώμην καὶ μείζους ἰδεῖν εἰσὶ, καὶ θυμοσοφώτεροι δὲ πάντα πάντη κρίνοιντο ἄν.—ÆLIAN, _De Nat. Anim._ lib. xvi. cap. xviii.

ÆLIAN also, in the same chapter, states the fact of the shipment of elephants in large boats from Ceylon to the opposite continent of India, for sale to the king of Kalinga; so that the export from Manaar, described in a former passage, has been going on apparently without interruption since the time of the Romans.

[139] The expression of TAVERNIER is to the effect, that as compared with all others, the elephants of Ceylon are “plus courageux _à la guerre_.” The rest of the passage is a curiosity:—

“Il faut remarquer ici une chose qu’on aura peut-être de la peine à croire mais qui est toutefois très-véritable: c’est que lorsque quelque roi ou quelque seigneur a quelqu’un de ces éléphants de Ceylan, et qu’on en amène quelque autre des lieux où les marchands vont les prendre, comme d’Achen, de Siam, d’Arakan, de Pégu, du royaume de Boutan, d’Assam, des terres de Cochin et de la côte du Mélinde, dès que les éléphants en voient un de Ceylan, par un instinct de nature, ils lui font la révérence, portant le bout de leur trompe à la terre et la relevant. Il est vrai que les éléphants que les grands seigneurs entretiennent, quand on les amène devant eux, pour voir s’ils sont en bon point, font trois fois une espèce de révérence avec leur trompe, _ce que j’ai vu souvent_; mais ils sont stylés à cela, et leurs maîtres le leur enseignent de bonne heure.”—_Les Six Voyages de_ J. B. TAVERNIER, lib. iii. ch. 20.

[140] _Ramayana_, sec. vi.; CAREY and MARSHMAN, i. 105; FAUCHE, i. t. p. 66.

[141] The only mention of the elephant in Sacred History is in the account given in _Maccabees_ of the invasion of Egypt by Antiochus, who entered it 170 B.C., “with chariots and elephants, and horsemen, and a great navy.” (1 Macc. i. 17.) Frequent allusions to the use of elephants in war occur in both books: and in chap. vi. 34, it is stated that “to provoke the elephants to fight they show them the blood of grapes and of mulberries.” The term showed, ἔδειξαν, might be thought to imply that the animals were enraged by the sight of the wine and its colour, but in the Third Book of Maccabees, in the Greek Septuagint, various other passages show that wine, on such occasions, was administered to the elephants to render them furious. (Macc. v. 2, 10, 45.) PHILE mentions the same fact, _De Elephante_, i. 145.

There is a very curious account of the mode in which the Arab conquerors of Scinde, in the 9th and 10th centuries, equipped the elephant for war; which being written with all the particularity of an eye-witness, bears the impress of truth and accuracy. MASSOUDI, who was born in Bagdad at the close of the 9th century, travelled in India in the year A.D. 913, and visited the Gulf of Cambay, the coast of Malabar, and the island of Ceylon:—from a larger account of his journeys he compiled a summary under the title of “_Moroudj al-dzeheb_” or the “_Golden Meadows_,” the MS. of which is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. M. REINAUD, in describing this manuscript, says, on its authority, “The Prince of Mensura, whose dominions lay south of the Indus, maintained eighty elephants trained for war, each of which bore in his trunk a bent cymeter (carthel), with which he was taught to cut and thrust at all confronting him. The trunk itself was effectually protected by a coat of mail, and the rest of the body enveloped in a covering composed jointly of iron and horn. Other elephants were employed in drawing chariots, carrying baggage, and grinding forage, and the performance of all bespoke the utmost intelligence and docility.”—REINAUD, _Mémoire sur l’Inde, antérieurement au milieu du XI^e siècle, d’après les écrivains arabes, persans et chinois_. Paris, M.D.CCC.XLIX. p. 215. See SPRENGER’S English translation of Massoudi, vol. i. p. 383.

[142] BRODERIP, _Zoological Recreations_, p. 226.

[143] The iron goad with which the keeper directs the movements of the elephants, called a _hendoo_ in Ceylon and _hawkus_ in Bengal, appears to have retained the present shape from the remotest antiquity. It is figured in the medals of Caracalla in the identical form in which it is in use at the present day in India.

The Greeks called it ἅρπη, and the Romans _cuspis_.

[144] JORDANUS DE SEVERAC, in his _Mirabilia Descripta_, written about the year 1330, thus describes the mode then in use for taming captured elephants in Cambodia:—“And so the wild elephant remaineth caught between the two gates. Then cometh a man _clothed in black or red, with his face covered_, who cruelly thrashes him from above, and crieth out cruelly against him as against a ‘thief!’ and this goeth on for five or six days; without his getting anything to eat or drink. Then cometh another man with _his face bare and clad in another colour_, who feigneth to smite the first man, and to drive and thrust him away. Then he cometh to the elephant and talketh to him, and with a long spear he scratcheth him, and he kisses him and gives him food. And this goes on for ten or fifteen days, and so by degrees he ventureth down beside him and bindeth him to another elephant. And then after about twenty days he may be taken out to be taught and broken in.” (Chap. v.)

[145] This was the largest elephant that had been tamed in Ceylon; he measured upwards of nine feet at the shoulders, and belonged to the caste so highly prized for the temples. He was gentle after his first capture, but his removal from the corral to the stables, though only a distance of six miles, was a matter of the extremest difficulty: his extraordinary strength rendering him more than a match for the attendant decoys. He on one occasion escaped, but was recaptured in the forest; and he afterwards became so docile as to perform a variety of tricks. He was at length ordered to be removed to Colombo; but such was his terror on approaching the fort, that on coaxing him to enter the gate, he became paralysed in the extraordinary way elsewhere alluded to, and died on the spot.

[146] The natives of Ceylon profess that the high-caste elephants, such as are allotted to the temples, are of all others the most difficult to tame, and M. BLES, the Dutch correspondent of BUFFON, mentions a caste of elephants which he had heard of, as being peculiar to the Kandyan kingdom, that were not higher than a heifer (génisse), covered with hair, and insusceptible of being tamed. (BUFFON, _Supp._ vol. vi. p. 29.) Bishop HEBER, in the account of his journey from Bareilly towards the Himalayas, describes the Raja Gourman Sing, “mounted on a little female elephant, hardly bigger than a Durham ox, and almost as shaggy as a poodle.” (_Journ._ ch. xvii.) It will be remembered that the mammoth discovered in 1803 embedded in icy soil in Siberia, was covered with a coat of long hair, with a sort of wool at the roots. Hence there arose the question whether that northern region had been formerly inhabited by a race of elephants, so fortified by nature against cold; or whether the individual discovered had been borne thither by currents from some more temperate latitudes. To the latter theory the presence of hair seemed a fatal objection; but so far as my own observation goes, I believe the elephants are more or less provided with hair. In some it is more developed than in others, and it is particularly observable in the young, which when captured are frequently covered with a woolly fleece, especially about the head and shoulders. In the older individuals in Ceylon, this is less apparent; and in captivity the hair appears to be altogether removed by the custom of the mahouts to rub their skin daily with oil and a rough lump of burned clay. See a paper on the subject, _Asiat. Journ._ N. S. vol. xiv. p. 182, by Mr. G. FAIRHOLME. Fossil remains of elephants of extremely small dimensions have, it is said, been discovered in the island of Malta.

[147]

Διπλῆς δέ φασιν εὐπορῆσαι καρδίας· Καὶ τῇ μὲν εἶναι θυμικὸν τὸ θηρίον Εἰς ἀκρατῆ κίνησιν ἠρεθισμένον, Τῇ δὲ προσηνὲς καὶ θρασύτητος ξένον. Καὶ πῇ μὲν αὐτῶν ἀκροᾶσθαι τῶν λόγων Οὓς ἄν τις Ἰνδὸς εὖ τιθασεύων λέγοι, Πῇ δὲ πρὸς αὐτοὺς τοὺς νομεῖς ἐπιτρὲχειν Εἰς τὰς παλαιὰς ἐκτραπὲν κακουργίας.

PHILE, _Expos. de Eleph._ l. 126, &c.

[148] Captain YULE, in his _Narrative of an Embassy to Ava in 1855_, records an illustration of this tendency of the elephant to sudden death; one newly captured, the process of taming which was exhibited to the British Envoy, “made vigorous resistance to the placing of a collar on its neck, and the people were proceeding to tighten it, when the elephant, which had lain down as if quite exhausted, reared suddenly on the hind quarters, and fell on its side—_dead!_” (P. 104.)

Mr. STRACHAN noticed the same liability of the elephants to sudden death from very slight causes; “if they fall,” he says, “at any time, though on plain ground, they either die immediately, or languish till they die; their great weight occasioning them so much hurt by the fall.” (_Phil. Trans._ A. D. 1701, vol. xxiii. p. 1052.)

[149] A correspondent informs me that on the Malabar coast of India, the elephant, when employed in dragging stones, moves them by means of a rope, which he either draws with his forehead, or manages by seizing it in his teeth.

[150] “Here the trees were large and handsome, but not strong enough to resist the inconceivable strength of the mighty monarch of these forests; almost every tree had half its branches broken short by them, and at every hundred yards I came upon entire trees, and these, _the largest in the forest_, uprooted clean out of the ground, and _broken short across their stems_.” (_A Hunter’s Life in South Africa._ By R. GORDON CUMMING, vol.ii. p.305.) “Spreading out from one another, they smash and destroy all the finest trees in the forest which happen to be in their course.... I have rode through forests where the trees thus broken lay so thick across one another, that it was almost impossible to ride through the districts.” (_Ibid._ p.310.)

Mr. Gordon Cumming does not name the trees which he saw thus “uprooted” and “broken across,” nor has he given any idea of their size and weight; but Major DENHAM, who observed like traces of the elephant in Africa, saw only small trees overthrown by them; and Mr. PRINGLE, who had an opportunity of observing similar practices of the animals in the neutral territory of the Eastern frontier of the Cape of Good Hope, describes their ravages as being confined to the mimosas, “immense numbers of which had been torn out of the ground, and placed in an inverted position, in order to enable the animals to browse at their ease on the soft and juicy roots, which form a favourite part of their food. Many of the _larger mimosas had resisted all their efforts; and indeed it is only after heavy rain, when the soil is soft and loose, that they ever successfully attempt this operation_.” (PRINGLE’S _Sketches of South Africa_.) Sir S. BAKER, whose observation confirms my own, as to the limited dimensions of the trees overthrown by elephants in Ceylon, says that in the vicinity of the White Nile, where the principal food of the elephant is the mimosa, he saw trees uprooted by them, which measured 30 feet high and 4 feet 6 inches in diameter. But he is “convinced that no single elephant could have overturned them; and the natives assured him that they mutually assist one another, and that several engage together in the work of overthrowing a large tree; the powerful tushes of some being applied as crowbars in the roots while others pull at the branches their trunks.” (_The Albert Nyanz_ vol. i. p. 276.)

[151] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” vol. ii. p. 23.

[152] _Menageries_, _etc._ ch. vi. p. 138.

[153] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” vol. i. p. 19.

[154] The principal sound by which the mahouts in Ceylon direct the motions of the elephants is a repetition, with various modulations, of the words _ur-re! ur-re!_ This is one of those interjections in which the sound is so expressive of the sense that persons in charge of animals of almost every description throughout the world appear to have adopted it with a concurrence that is very curious. The drivers of camels in Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt encourage them to speed by shouting _ar-ré! ar-ré!_ The Arabs in Algeria cry _eirich!_ to their mules. The Moors seem to have carried the custom with them into Spain, where mules are still driven with cries of _arré_ (whence the muleteers derive their Spanish appellation of “arrieros”). In France the sportsman excites the hound by shouts of _hare! hare!_ and the waggoner there turns his horses by his voice, and the use of the word _hurhaut!_ In the North, “_Hurs_ was a word used by the old Germans in urging their horses to speed:” and Sir FRANCIS HEAD, in his _Bubbles from the Brunnens_, describes the Schwin-General shouting “_ariff_” to his pigs...“_ariff!_ vociferated the old man, striding after one of his rebellious subjects; _ariff!_ re-echoed his boy striding after another.” (P.94.)

To the present day, the herdsmen in Ireland, and parts of Scotland, drive their pigs with shouts of _hurrish!_ a sound closely resembling that used by the mahouts in Ceylon.

[155] _On the Difference between the Human Membrana tympani and that of the Elephant._ By Sir EVERARD HOME, Bart., _Philos. Trans._ 1823. Paper by Prof. HARRISON, _Proc. Royal Irish Academy_, vol. iii. p. 386.

[156] I have already noticed the striking effect produced on the captive elephants in the corral, by the harmonious notes of an ivory flute; and on looking to the graphic description which is given by ÆLIAN of the exploits which he witnessed as performed by the elephants exhibited at Rome, it is remarkable how very large a share of their training appears to have been ascribed to the employment of music.

PHILE, in the account which he has given of the elephant’s fondness for music, would almost seem to have versified the prose narrative of ÆLIAN, as he describes its excitement at the more animated portions, its step being regulated to the time and movements of the harmony: the whole “_surprising in a creature whose limbs are without joints!_”

Καινόν τι ποιῶν ἐξ ἀνάρθρων ὀργάνων.

PHILE, _Expos. de Eleph._ l. 216.

For an account of the training and performances of the elephants at Rome, as narrated by ÆLIAN, see the appendix to this chapter.

[157] _The Angler in the Lake District_, p. 23. A similar story is told in the _Memoir of Bishop Wilson_, of an elephant which when suffering with ophthalmia had experienced the relief derived from a solution of nitrate of silver, and voluntarily offered its eye for a re-application of the remedy, on a second visit of the surgeon.

[158] A shocking account of the death of this poor animal is given in HONE’S _Every-Day Book_, March 1830, p. 337.

[159] ÆLIAN, lib. xiii. c. 7.

[160] The elephant which was dissected by Dr. HARRISON of Dublin, in 1847, died of a febrile attack, after four or five days’ illness, which, as Dr. H. tells me in a private letter, was “very like scarlatina, at that time a prevailing disease: its skin in some places became almost scarlet.”

[161] See a paper, entitled “_Recollections of Ceylon_,” in _Fraser’s Magazine_ for December 1860.

[162] _Annales du Muséum_, F. viii. 1805. p. 94, and _Ossemens Fossiles_, quoted by OWEN, in the article on “Teeth,” in TODD’S _Cyclop. of Anatomy_, _etc._ vol. iv. p. 929.

[163] An ordinary-sized elephant engrosses the undivided attention of _three_ men. One, as his mahout or superintendent, and two as leaf-cutters, who bring him branches and grass for his daily supplies. An animal of larger growth would probably require a third leaf-cutter. The daily consumption is two cwt. of green food with about half a bushel of grain. When in the vicinity of towns and villages, the attendants have no difficulty in procuring an abundant supply of the branches of the trees to which elephants are partial; and in journeys through the forests and unopened country, the leaf-cutters are sufficiently expert in the knowledge of those particular plants with which the elephant is satisfied. Those that would be likely to disagree with him he unerringly rejects. His favourites are the palms, especially the cluster of rich, unopened leaves, known as the “cabbage,” of the coco-nut and areca; and he delights to tear open the young trunks of the palmyra and jaggery (_Caryota urens_) in search of the farinaceous matter contained in the spongy pith. Next to these come the varieties of fig-trees, particularly the sacred _Bo_ (_F. religiosa_) which is found near every temple, and the _na gaha_ (_Messua ferrea_), with thick dark leaves and a scarlet flower. The leaves of the jak-tree and bread-fruit (_Artocarpus integrifolia_, and _A. incisa_), the wood apple (_Ægle Marmelos_), Palu (_Mimusops Indica_), and a number of others well known to their attendants, are all consumed in turn. The stems of the plaintain, the stalks of the sugar-cane, and the feathery tops of the bamboos, are irresistible luxuries. Pine-apples, water-melons, and fruits of every description, are voraciously devoured, and a coconut when found is first rolled under foot to detach it from the husk and fibre, and then raised in his trunk and crushed almost without an effort, by his ponderous jaws.

The grasses are not found in sufficient quantity to be an item of daily fodder; the Mauritius or the Guinea grass is seized with avidity; lemon grass is rejected from its overpowering perfume, but rice in the straw, and every description of grain, whether growing or dry; gram (_Cicer arietinum_), Indian corn, and millet, are his natural food. Of such of these as can be found, it is the duty of the leaf-cutters, when in the jungle and on march, to provide a daily supply.

[164] ARISTOTELES _de Anim._ 1. viii. c. 9.

[165] _Ménag. de Mus. Nat._ p. 107.

[166] _Ostéographie_, “Eléph.” p. 74.

[167] FLEURENS, _De la Longévité Humaine_, pp. 82, 89.

[168] This remark regarding the elephant of Ceylon does not appear to extend to that of Africa, as I observe that BEAVER, in his _African Memoranda_, says that “the skeletons of old ones that have died in the woods are frequently found.” (_African Memoranda relative to an attempt to establish British Settlements at the Island of Bulama._ Lond. 1815, p. 353.)

[169] A corral was organised near Putlam in 1846, by Mr. Morris, the chief officer of the district. It was constructed across one of the paths to which the elephants resort in their frequent marches, and during the course of the proceedings two of the captured elephants died. Their carcases were left of course within the enclosure, which was abandoned as soon as the capture was complete. The wild elephants resumed their path through it, and a few days afterwards the headman reported to Mr. Morris that the bodies had been removed and carried outside the corral to a spot to which nothing but the elephants could have borne them.

[170] _Expositio de Eleph._ l. 243.

[171] The selection by animals of a _place to die_, is not confined to the elephant. DARWIN says, that in South America “the guanacos (llamas) appear to have favourite spots for lying down to die; on the banks of the Santa Cruz river, in certain circumscribed spaces which were generally bushy and all near the water, the ground was actually white with their bones: on one such spot I counted between ten and twenty heads.”—_Nat. Voy._ ch. viii. The same has been remarked in the Rio Gallegos; and at St. Jago in the Cape de Verde Islands, DARWIN saw a retired corner similarly covered with the bones of the goat, as if it were “the burial-ground of all the goats in the island.”

[172] _Arabian Nights’ Entertainment_, LANE’S edition, vol. iii. p. 77.

[173] See a disquisition on the origin of the story of Sinbad, by M. REINAUD, in the introduction prefixed to his translation of the _Arabian Geography of Aboulfeda_, vol. i. p. lxxvi.

INDEX.

ADAM’S PEAK, ascent of by elephants, _page_ 41

——, encounter with wild elephants near, 77

Adventures with elephants, 71

ÆLIAN, account of the export of elephants from Ceylon, 5 _n._

—— his fallacy as to the elephant shedding his tusks, 7 _n._

—— alleged antipathy of the elephant and rhinoceros, 9, 15

—— his account of training, 151

—— error as to the elephant being without joints, 34, 35 _n._

—— says elephants were trained to kill by their knees, 16 _n._

—— on the supposed superiority of the Ceylon to the Indian elephant, 152 _n._

—— elephant, love of music, 168 _n._

—— elephants performing at Rome, 168 _n._, 183

Aetagalla Rock, legend of, 107

Affection for their young, 47

African elephant teeth different from Indian, vii.

—— ribs and vertebræ, viii. 20

—— both sexes have tusks, 6

—— ivory preferred to Ceylon in Europe, 6 _n._

—— conjecture respecting tusks, 7

—— great size of tusks; 300 lbs. and upwards, 7, 8

African elephant is not vulnerable in the forehead, as the Ceylon elephant is, _page_ 81

Age of elephants, 123, 177

—— estimated duration of life in, 177

Airavanta, Sanscrit, origin of the word elephant, 4 _n._

Alce. _See_ Elk, 33

_Alexandri Epistola ad Aristolelem_, 11

Alexander the Great, his Indian expedition, 150

—— coins of, 151 _n._

_Alisaunder_, English romance of, 12 _n._

Allia. _See_ Hora allia, 82. _See_ Rogue

Alligator River, elephant hunt at, 106

Anarajapoora, instinct exhibited by elephants at, 65

Anatomy of the elephant imperfectly known, 56

—— account of by Molyneux, A.D. 1696, 56 _n._

ANSTED, Prof., on the height of elephants, 31 _n._

Antipater brought the first Indian elephant to Greece, 150

Antipathy of elephants to other animals, 12, 15

—— its improbability, 15

Ants, superior to the elephant in sagacity, 68

—— their marvellous power of discovering sugar, 139 _n._

_Arabian Nights_, story of the burial place of dead elephants, 182

ἅρπη. _See_ Hendoo, 156 _n._

ARISTOTLE, on the trunk of the elephant, 28 _n._

—— on the fallacy of the elephant having no joints, 33

—— on the double stomach of the elephant, 57 _n._

—— on its mode of levelling trees, 140 _n._

ARMANDI, error as to the height of Ceylon elephant, 31 _n._

—— on the double stomach of, 67 _n._

—— on elephants in war, 151

_Ar-ré_, sound to guide elephants, 167 _n._

—— its variations in various countries, ib.

_Arundel MSS._, errors as to the elephant, 36

Assam, elephant of, x.

Avisavelle, elephant corral at, 43

BADULLA, fight between two elephants at, 16

—— adventures with elephants near, 71, 74

BAKER, Sir SAMUEL, on the weight of African ivory, 8 _n._

—— his stories of elephant shooting, 77 _n._

—— on the difference between the Ceylon and African species, 20 _n._

—— on power to uproot trees, 162 _n._

—— on the size of the elephant’s foot in Africa, 98 _n._

BARBEZIEUX, RICHARD DE, error as to joints of elephant, 37

Bari, size of African ivory at, 8 _n._

Bathing elephants, story of, 51, 55 _n._

BENARY, his theory of the derivation of the word elephant, 4 _n._

Bengal, elephants of, viii.

—— method of poisoning them, 6

—— mode of capturing them, 104

Bentinck, Baron, communication from, viii. ix.

BERNIER, as to the supposed superiority of the Ceylon elephant to that of India, 152

“_Bestiaries_” of the Middle Ages, in error as to the joints of the elephant,36

Burmah, method of capturing elephants in, 97

Bison, its instinct as to harvest time, 64

BLAIR, Dr., on the anatomy of the elephant, 56 _n._

BLES, M., affection of elephants for their young, 47. _See_ Buffon

—— on training elephants, 159 _n._

Bo-trees, sacred; eaten by elephants, 111.

BOCHART, derivation of the word _elephant_, 4 _n._

BONAPARTE, Prince LUCIEN, his account of the Sumatran elephant, viii.

Breeding in captivity, fallacy as to, 176

BRODERIP, on the mode of training, 155

—— on the size of tusks in elephants, 8 _n._

—— on the stomach of, 56

BROOKE, Sir VICTOR, Bart., great elephant shot by, 9 _n._

—— immense tusk, 16

BROWNE, Sir THOMAS, _Vulgar Errors_, exposes the delusion as to there being no joints in the elephant, 32, 38

BUCHANAN, on rogue elephants, 49 _n._

Buffalo, double stomach of, 63

BUFFON. _See_ BLES

—— on the double stomach of the elephant, 57 _n._

—— on training, 159 _n._

Burial place of the elephants, as told in the story of _Sinbad of the Sea_, 181

Burying their dead, alleged habit of elephants, 180

CÆSAR, his story of the _alce_, 33

Cambodia, method of training elephants in, 157

Camel, alleged antipathy of the elephant to, 13

—— cellular stomach, 60

CAMPER, on the double stomach of the elephant, 58

Captivity, conduct of elephants when first taken, 150

Carthaginians employed elephants in war, 151

Caution of elephants as to pit-falls alleged, but doubtful, 67

Ceylon, geological formation of the island, vii.

—— export of elephants to India, viii. 5

—— profuse number of elephants in, 5

—— cause of declining numbers, 6

Charlemagne, elephant sent to by Haroun Alraschid, 35

Chena cultivation, 64

China, Ceylon ivory preferred for carving, 62

Chittagong, elephant of, x.

Chuny, the tame elephant killed at Exeter Change, its cruel death, 169

Climbing, ability of the elephant in, 41

Cochin China, elephant of, xi.

COCKAYNE. See _Alexandri Epistola, etc._, 11

Coco-nut, how eaten by an elephant, 64

COLERIDGE, on the sagacity of the elephant, 68

Colombo frequented by elephants in 1705 A. D., 5

COMBE, on the brain of the elephant, 86

Cooroowe. _See_ Noosers, 122, 155

Coroners’ inquests show few deaths by elephants, 10

Corral or Kraal, operations of, 95

—— in Bengal, how constructed. _See_ Keddah, 104

—— dimensions, 113

—— form of, 112

—— its strength, 114

—— the drive of the elephants, 115

—— the rush and return, 116

—— singular night scene, 117

—— the capture made, 118

—— noosed and secured, 121

—— distress of the captives, and their struggles, 125, 135

—— terror of the elephants for white rods, 128

—— noticed by Pliny, 128, _n._

—— conduct of the young ones, 137

—— extraordinary scene, 140

—— interesting demeanour of the captives, 140

—— a second herd driven in and taken, 143

—— leading out the captives, 147

CORSE, his account of the Indian elephant, 47

COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES, his account of the export of elephants from Ceylon, 5 _n._

Courage in open ground, 86, 87

Cripps, Mr., description of a strange sound made by elephants, 29

—— story of an elephant feigning death, 70

—— on the taming and training of elephants, 158

—— on their attachment to attendants, 166

Cripps, Mr., on elephants breeding in captivity, 177

Cruelties in elephant shooting, 77 _n._

CTESIAS, fallacy that the elephant has no joints, 33

CUMMING, Mr. GORDON, his cruel experiments on the vital endurance of the elephant, 81 _n._

—— questionable stories of trees uprooted by elephants, 162 _n._

Curiosity, spirit of, strong in the elephant, 67

—— story of Colonel Hardy, 67

Cuspis. _See_ Hendoo, 156 _n._

Cuttack, elephant of, x.

—— method of poisoning elephants in, 6

CUVIER, on the comparative sagacity of the elephant, 68

—— on the tusks of elephants, 173

—— on duration of life in, 177

_DAH! DAH!_ word hateful to wild elephant, 100

_Dakra_, a poison for elephants in Bengal, 6 _n._

DARWIN, on the burial place of llamas and goats, 101 _n._

DAVY, Dr., on endurance of pain in the elephant, 168

—— on the spirit of curiosity in the elephant, 67

Dawson, Capt., an elephant shot by, dies standing, 39

DE BLAINVILLE, on the duration of life in the elephant, 177

DE BRY, story of a horse killed by a trained elephant, 13

Dead elephant, body rarely found, 179

Deafness occasional in elephants, 30

Death feigned by an elephant, 70

Decoy elephants, their conduct, 119, 123, 134

_Défenses_. _See_ Tusks, 9

Dekkan, elephant of the, xi.

De Lima, General, immense tusks got by, in Africa, 8 _n._

DENHAM, Major, on the height of an African elephant, 31

——, Major, power of elephant to overthrow trees, 162 _n._

Descending acclivities, mode of, 44

Dentine, 173. _See_ Ivory

DICUIL, description of the elephant of Charlemagne, 35

Dinka, size of African ivory at, 8 _n._, 12

DIODORUS SICULUS, on the sagacity of the Indian elephant, 150

Dogs, elephants impatient of, 14

—— Major Skinner’s dog, kept off the elephants by its bark, 15

—— superior in sagacity to the elephant, 69

DONNE, His error as to the joints of the elephant, 38

Dublin, elephant burnt to death, 26 _n._

“Duipa,” an Indian name of the elephant, its signification, 63 _n._

Dust, habit of throwing it over themselves, 133

Dutch possessions in India, vii. _See_ Temminck

—— elephant hunts conducted by, 95

EAR, formation of, 167

—— love of music, 168 _n._

—— Sir EVERARD HOME, on hearing in the elephant, 167

Ebony, logs piled by elephants, 164

“Eleph,” Hebrew, conjectured to be the root of elepha, 4 _n._

“_Elephant_,” derivation of the word, 4 _n._

—— conjectures of Pictet, Bochart, Pott, and Benary, 4 _n._

—— great numbers in Ceylon, 5

—— will ere long be extinct in India, 6 _n._

—— alleged enmity to man, and other animals, 10

—— signs of perfection in. See _Hastisilpe_, 21

—— natural colour of the skin, 22

—— loves shade, 25

—— scene, by night while bathing, 52

—— stomach of the elephant double, 56

—— the Ceylon elephant supposed to exceed that of India in sagacity, 152

Elephant, the first brought to Greece by Antipater, 150

Elephant shooting. _See_ Shooting ἐλέφας signified not the elephant, but its _ivory_, 4 _n._

—— Benary’s derivation of the word, 66 _n._

Elephas Sumatranus. _See_ Sumatra, viii.

—— supposed to differ from the elephant of India, vii.

—— this theory doubted by Dr. Falconer, ix.

Elk, error of Cæsar in saying that the “alce” has no joints, 33

_Englishman, Voyage of a certain_, story of an elephant killing a horse, 13 _n._

EVELYN, JOHN, refutes the fallacy that the elephant has no joints, 33

Eye of the elephant small, 26, ib. _n._

—— its accuracy when engaged in working, 26

FAIRHOLME on the elephant, 159 _n._

FALCONER, Dr., doubts the alleged difference between the elephants of Sumatra and India, ix.

—— on the height of elephants, 31 _n._

Fanning themselves, habit of, 84

—— extreme grace of the movement, 136

—— in the corral, 135

Feet, habit of swinging, 84

—— not, as supposed, a substitute for exercise, 85

Females in a herd, numerous, 47

Fences, elephant’s dread of, 65

_Fils-ben_, Danish for ivory, 4 _n._

Flesh of the elephant coarse, 88

FLEURENS, on the duration of life in the elephant, 177

Flies, their marvellous faculty of discerning carrion, 139 _n._

—— account of their hurrying to death-beds, 139 _n._

Food of the elephant when wild, 63

—— when tamed and trained, 175

Foot, a frequent seat of disease, 170

—— its extreme sensitiveness, 133

—— of the elephant makes good soup, 89

—— twice its circumference equal to the height of the animal, 98 _n._

FORBES, anecdote from his _Oriental Memoirs_, 107 _n._

Forehead of the elephant, wound in, fatal, 80

Fossil elephant, 159 _n._

Fretz, Gerard, frightful wound, 90

GADJAH. _See_ Sumatran elephant, viii.

Gallwey, Capt. P. Payne, number of elephants shot by him, 77 _n._

Geological formation of Ceylon, vii.

“_Goondah._” _See_ Rogue, 48

Gooneratné Modliar, his derivation for the word elephant, 5 _n._

GUILLIM, heraldry of the elephant, 38 _n._

HAIRY elephants, 159 _n._

Hardy, Colonel, story of, 69

Haroun, Alraschid, sends an elephant to Charlemagne, 35

HARRISON, Dr., on the anatomy of the elephant, 26 _n._, 57 _n._, 60, 61

—— on the structure of the head, 79

—— on the ear of the elephant, 167

_Hastisilpe_, a Singhalese work on elephants, 17 _n._, 21

Hawkus. _See_ Hendoo, 155

Head, wound in, fatal, 79

—— section of, 80

—— this fact noticed by Pliny, 79 _n._

Hearing. _See_ Ear

Heber, Bishop, describes a diminutive species of elephant, 159 _n._

Hedges, dreaded by elephants, 67

Height, exaggerated estimates of, in elephants, 30

Hendoo, used by the mahout, 155

Herd, the term described as applied to the elephant, 45

—— similarity of features in, 45

—— submissive to one leader, 50

—— their conventional association and attachment, 45

HERODOTUS, account of the antipathy of the elephant to the camel, 13

—— veneration for white horses and white oxen, 23

Himalayas, elephant paths on, 43

Hippopotamus, solitary individuals of, 49

HODGSON, Mr. B. H., his explorations in Nepal, xi.

Hog, double stomach of, 58

HOLLAND, DR., on the physiology of tusks, 17 _n._

HOME, Sir EVERARD, on the double stomach of the elephant, 58

—— on the ear of the elephant, 166, 167

HOME, RANDAL, his heraldry of the elephant, 38

HOOKER, Dr., elephants in the Himalayas, 43

_Hora._ _See_ Rogue, 47, 72

HORACE, mentions a white elephant at Rome, 24

Horse, alleged antipathy of the elephant to, 12

—— instances in disproof of this, 13

—— killed by a trained elephant, 13

—— anecdote of the meeting of a horse and an elephant, 19

—— structure of the shoulder joint, 41

IDLENESS, love of, in tame elephants, 165

Indian elephant supposed to differ from that of Sumatra, viii.

—— comparative anatomy of, vii.

—— varieties of the same species in, x.

—— elephant is dying out in India, 6 _n._

Indicopleustes (_see_ Cosmas), export of elephants, 5

Ivory, annual importations of, 6 _n._

—— proportion from Ceylon, 6 _n._

—— of Ceylon preferred in China, 6 _n._

—— African preferred in Europe, 6 _n._

—— weight of, in various countries, 8 _n._

—— immense African tusks at Goa, 8 _n._

—— how formed. _See_ Dentine, 173

JAFFNA, instinct shown by elephants at, 64

JARDINE, SIR WILLIAM, fallacy as to elephants shedding tusks, 7 _n._

Java, no elephants in the island, viii.

Joints, ancient error as to the elephant having none, 32

—— explanation of its origin, 38, 39

KANDY, the King of, held the killing of an elephant a criminal offence, 5

—— his hunts for capturing elephants, 96

Keddah. _See_ Corral, 104

Kimbul-oya. _See_ Alligator River, 106

Knox, his account of executions by trained elephants, 17

—— on the attachment of the herd to the young, 47

—— his accounts of elephant hunts in Kandy 77 _n._

Kombook tree; lime extracted from the bark, 110

Korahl. _See_ Corral.

Korles, the Seven, elephant hunts in, 4

Kornegalle, beauty of the place, 107

—— its temple the resort of Buddhists, 108

—— sacred footstep on the rock, 108

Kraal. _See_ Corral

—— derivation of the word, 105

Kurahl. _See_ Corral

Kurminia-galla, 107 _n._

Kurunoi-galla. _See_ Kornegalle

LABOUR of tame elephants too costly, 164, 174. _See_ Tame Elephants

Lampongs. _See_ Sumatra, viii.

Leap, the elephant unable to, 40

—— anecdote, doubtful, of an elephant leaping, 41

LE BRUN, his account of the elephants in Ceylon, 5 _n._

Leyden, elephants in Museum, x.

Life, duration of in the elephant, 177, 178

Lightning, dreaded by elephants, 68

Lindsay, Mr., adventure with elephants, 75

LIVINGSTONE, Dr., on the solitary hippopotamus, 49

Llama, double stomach of, 60 _n._

Louis XIV., elephant belonging to, 57

Loxodon. _See_ Elephas Sumatranus, viii.

_Luca bos_, Roman term for the elephants of Pyrrhus, 4 _n._

_MACCABEES_, story of Jews killed by elephants, 16 _n._, 154 _n._

Machlis, an unknown animal, described by Pliny, 33

M‘GEE, Dr., his account of flies hurrying towards persons dying, 139 _n._

_Mahawanse_, mention of a white elephant in, 23

Mahout, elephant driver, the power of discrimination in India, x.

—— conduct of the mahouts in a corral, 129

—— mahouts said to die young, 166

Males, proportion of in a herd, small, 47

Malta, small fossil elephant found at, 159 _n._

Man, elephant has no natural antipathy to, 10

—— few deaths occasioned by them, 10

Manaar, singular scene on shipping elephants for India, 102

—— described in A.D. 1701, 102

_Marfil_, Spanish name for ivory, 4 _n._

—— _See Mafirm_, Portuguese, ib.

Marfil, Palma de, the vegetable ivory palm, 4 _n._

_Marfim_, Portuguese for ivory, 4 _n._

MASSOUDI, on the use of the elephant in war, 159 _n._

MATTHEW PARIS, his error as to the joints of the elephant, 36

Matura, elephants shipped from for India, 103

Mercer, Mr. Græme, story of a fight between two elephants, 16

Metatarsus, shortness of, enables the elephant to climb, 43

MOLYNEUX, his anatomy of the elephant, 56

Moormen of Ceylon, 97. _See_ Panickeas.

MORRIS, Mr., conducts the corral in 1847, 109

MOULIN, A., his letter to Sir William Petty, 56 _n._

“_Mudda._” _See_ “Must,” 11

Muddy water not objected to by elephants, 55

Music, elephants’ love of, 168

“Must,” term explained, 11

NOUAER, size of African ivory at, 8 _n._

NATIVES of Ceylon, their narratives of accidents and adventures with elephants, 71

Negombo, adventures with elephants at, 75

Nepal-root, a poison for elephants, 6

Nepal, mode of capturing elephants in, 97

Nile, White, enormous tusks got near, 8 _n._ _See_ Baker, Sir Samuel

Noises produced by elephants, 27

Noosers. _See_ Cooroowe, 122

—— their extraordinary courage, 136

Noosing elephants, as practised by the Panickeas, 99

Noosing in a corral, operation described, 122, 124

Numidia, Medal of, 156 _n._

OLFACTORY lobes, 26 _n._

Optic nerve in the elephant, 26 _n._

Osteology of the elephant. _See_ Teeth, viii. x.

OWEN, Prof., on the anatomy of the elephant, 56 _n._, 59, 60, 62

—— on the formation of ivory, 173

PAIN, patient endurance of, 168

PALLEGOIX, on the white elephant, 23 _n._

—— on sounds produced by elephants, 30 _n._

Palma de marfil, the vegetable ivory palm, 4 _n._

Panickeas, their marvellous skill as trackers, 97

—— their singular courage, 79

—— their method of capturing wild elephants, 99

—— mode of taming after capture, 101

—— their method of conducting the captives to the coast, 101

PARIS. _See_ MATTHEW PARIS.

Peccary, double stomach of, 58

PETHERICK, his account of large ivory in Soudan, 8 _n._

PHILE, his error as to the joints of the elephant, 35

—— difficulty of the elephant in rising, 30

—— elephant does not object to muddy water, 55 _n._

—— thinks the elephant hates the pig, 117 _n._

—— on elephants as executioners, 154 _n._

—— elephant’s love of music, 168 _n._

PHILLIPE, on the supposed superiority of the Ceylon to the Indian elephant, 152

_Physiologus._ _See_ THEROALDUS, 36

PICTET, Prof., his essay on the derivation of the word _elephant_, 4 _n._

Pigs, antipathy of the elephant to. _See_ Swine, 14

—— spoil the capture at a corral, 116

Pingo, 71 _n._

Pit-falls, elephants surprised in, 67.

—— objections to, 96

PLINY, his fallacy as to the elephant shedding his tusks, 7 _n._

—— as to the antipathy of the elephant to other animals, 15

—— error as to the joints of the elephant, 32

—— the _machlis_, 33

—— terror of the elephant for white rods, 128

—— mode of taming it, 151

—— belief that the elephant has two hearts, 160

Poison for destroying elephants in Bengal, 6

POLYHISTOR. _See_ SOLINUS, 35

Ponnekella. _See_ Mahout, 122

Portuguese, elephant hunts conducted by, 95

—— origin of the word corral, 105

POTT, conjecture as to the derivation of the word “elephant,” 4 _n._

PRINGLE, on power of elephant to uproot trees, 162 _n._

Provençal song-writers, errors as to the elephant, 37

_Pseudodoxia Epidemica._ _See_ Sir THOMAS BROWNE.

Ptolemy Philopater, employs elephant to kill Jewish martyrs, 16 _n._

Punishments for tame elephants, 165

Puswael, a gigantic bean, 110

PYRARD, on the supposed superiority of the elephant of Ceylon to that of India, 152

Pyrrhus, his elephants, 4 _n._, 150

RAIN, coming of foreseen by the elephant, 69

Raja-Kariya, 110. _See_ Ripon.

Ramgur, method of poisoning elephants in, 6

Ranghani, the nooser, 123

—— his prowess and success, 127

Raté-mahat-meyas, encourage the taking of elephants in corrals, 111

REINAUD, on the use of the elephant in war, 154 _n._

Repose, peaceful, of the elephant, 84

Retirement, love of, 85

Rhinoceros, alleged antipathy between and the elephant, 9

Ripon, Earl of, abolishes rajakariya, 110

Rise, difficulty of the elephant to, 38, 39

Rogers, Major, story of his horse and the elephants, 13 _n._

—— elephant shot by him falls on its knees, 39

—— number killed by him, 77 _n._

Rogue elephant, their origin and habits, 46

—— their vice and depredations, 49, 50, 82 _n._

—— captured in a corral, 138

—— his death, 138

Rome, performance of elephants, 168 _n._, 183

Ronkedor. _See_ Rogue, 47 _n._

Ronquedue. _See_ Rogue, ib.

SAGACITY of the elephant, its superiority questioned, 68

—— Indian elephant said to excel the African in, 150

—— compared with that of the horse and dog, 161

Saragossa, elephant fight, exhibited, 10 _n._

SCHLEGEL, Prof., on the elephant of Sumatra, viii.

—— doubts its distinctness from the elephant of Ceylon, viii.-xi.

—— on the supposed superiority of the Ceylon to the Indian elephant, 152 _n._

Serpents, in Ceylon, more accidents from than from elephants, 10

SEVERAC, JORDANUS DE, on the mode of training elephants in Cambodia, 157 _n._

SHAKSPEARE, error as to the joints of the elephant, 37

—— on capturing elephants in pitfalls, 96 _n._

Shaw, fallacy as to the elephant shedding the tusks, 7 _n._

Shilook, size of African ivory at, 83

Shooting elephants, 77

—— cruelties of, 77 _n._

—— fatal spot in head, 79, and ear, ib.

Siam, elephant of, xi.

—— sounds produced by, 30 _n._

Sight, power of, 26

—— accuracy of eye when working, 162

Silhet, elephant of, x.

_Sinbad of the Sea_, story of the burial place of dead elephants, 181

Siribeddi, the female decoy, her ability, 123

—— her conduct, 145

SKINNER, MAJOR, story of his dog, 15

—— his description of a strange sound made by elephants, 29

—— finds elephant traces on Adam’s Peak, 41

—— number of elephants shot by him, 78

—— scene described by,—elephants at night, 51

—— story of the courage of an elephant hunter, 99 _n._

SLEAMAN, General, account of wolves suckling children, 47 _n._

Sloane, Sir Hans, on the anatomy of the elephant, 56 _n._

Smell, power of, 27, 98

SOLINUS, his error as to the joints of the elephant, 35

Sounds uttered by the elephant, 27

Soup, made from the elephant’s foot, 89

Speed of an elephant, 32

Sport. _See_ Shooting

Stomach of the elephant, double, 56

Stones, how raised by elephants, 162

STRACHAN, Mr., description of shipping elephants at Manaar, 103 _n._

—— on their liability to sudden death, 160 _n._

Structure of the elephant, 4

STUCKLEY, Dr. WILLIAM, on the anatomy of the elephant, 56 _n._

Sudden death, liability of elephants to, 159, 160 _n._

“Sun and moon,” emblems of duration, 187

Sumatra, elephant of, viii.

—— called _gadjah_, viii.

—— description by Temminck, vii. _n._

—— opinion of Prof. Schlegel on its distinctness from the elephant of India, viii.

—— ribs and vertebræ, vii.

—— teeth of, viii.

—— this opinion controverted by Dr. Falconer, ix.

Surgical operations on elephants, 168

Swimming, action of the elephant in, 55

Swine, alleged antipathy of elephant to, 11, 14

TAME elephants, their conduct in the corral, 134. _See_ Decoys

—— value of their labour 162, 174

—— levelling trees, 163

—— piling timber, 164

—— laziness, 165

—— punishments, 165

—— attachment to attendants, 166

—— medical treatment, 168, 170

—— obedience to orders, 169

—— causes of death in captivity, 171

—— weight of draught, 174

—— cost of feeding a tame elephant, 175

—— favourite food, 175

TAVERNIER, on the supposed superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, 153 _n._

Teeth of the Sumatran elephant, viii.

TEMMINCK’S _Dutch Possessions in India_, viii.

—— account of Sumatran elephant, viii.

THEROALDUS, _Physiologus_, error in, as to the joints of the elephant, 36

THEVENOT, on the supposed superiority of the Ceylon elephant to that of India, 152

THOMSON, error in his _Seasons_, as to the joints of the elephant, 38

Timber, how dragged by elephants, 161 _n._, 162

—— wonderful skill in piling of, 164

Tipperah, elephant of, x.

Tissaweva. _See_ Anarajapoora, 65

Tooth-ache, 172

Training elephants, 150, &c.

—— first employments, 161

—— males more unmanageable than females, 158

—— process of, 150

—— varieties of disposition, 159

Trees, manner in which elephants level them, 146

—— stories of overthrowing exaggerated, 162

_Trompe._ _See_ Trunk

Trumpeting, peculiar sound of, 144

Trunk, so called from “trump,” 28

—— Aristotle compares the sound to a trumpet, ib.

—— strange drawings of, in the fifteenth century, 28 _n._

Tushes, their use to the elephant, 7

—— they, and not the tusks, shed, 7 _n._

Tuskers, influence of in the herd, 50

—— their efficiency in a corral, 136

Tusks, rare in the Ceylon elephant, 6

—— in Africa both male and female have them, 6

—— average weight of those imported, 60 cwt., 6 _n._

—— in Ceylon are light, owing to the animals being shot young, 6 _n._, 8

—— a favourite treasure in Buddhist temples, 6 _n._, 8

—— both sexes have, in India and Africa, 6 _n._, 8

—— fallacy as to the elephant shedding his tusks, 7

—— conjecture as to the presence of, in African elephant, and their absence in that of India and Ceylon, 7

—— weight in various countries, 8 _n._

—— instance of a diseased one, 8 _n._ _See_ Brooke, Sir Victor

—— female elephant has none, in Ceylon, 9

—— not ordinarily used as weapons of offence, 9

—— fight between an elephant and two bulls, at Saragossa, 10 _n._

—— fight of two elephants with their tusks, 10

—— story in Maccabees of Jews killed by elephants, 16 _n._

—— what is their use, 17, 17 _n._

—— abnormal varieties in shape, 17 _n._

TYTLER, Mr., story of curiosity in elephants, 67 _n._

VALENTYN, his account of shipping elephants for India from Ceylon, 103

Vegetable ivory palm, 4 _n._

_Vulgar Errors._ _See_ Sir THOMAS BROWNE, 32

WATER, love of the elephant for, 4 _n._

—— attempt to derive the word _elephant_ from, 4 _n._

—— receptacle for, in the stomach, 56

—— quantities withdrawn by the trunk in the corral, 133

Weber’s _Metrical Romance_ of the thirteenth century, 12 _n._

Wells, dug by elephants, 54

White elephant; a lusus naturæ, 23

—— exhibited in Holland in 1633, 24

—— mentioned by Horace at Rome ib.

WHITE, GILBERT, of Selborne, on the affection of animals to the young of others, 46 _n._

White oxen worshipped in Egypt, 23

WILKINSON, Sir GARDNER, on the knowledge of the elephant in ancient Egypt, 152 _n._

WOLF, his strange adventures in Ceylon, 31 _n._, 48, 105 _n._

—— on the capture of wild elephants, 96 _n._

—— on the height of the elephant, 31

Wolves suckling children, 46 _n._

Wound of Lieut. Fretz, 90

WRIGHT’S _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, 36

YOUNG, affection for, 47

Young elephants, their conduct when captured, 137

—— their tricks in captivity, 138, 148

YULE, Colonel, on the liability of the elephant to sudden death, 160 _n._

LONDON

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POPULAR WORK ON NATURAL HISTORY BY REV. J. G. WOOD, M.A.

Second Edition now ready, in 1 vol. 8vo. price 21_s._ cloth; or, price 27_s._ half-bound in morocco by Rivière,

HOMES WITHOUT HANDS:

BEING A

DESCRIPTION OF THE HABITATIONS OF ANIMALS,

CLASSED ACCORDING TO THEIR PRINCIPLE OF CONSTRUCTION.

By J. G. WOOD, M.A., F.L.S.

With about 140 Illustrations engraved on Wood by G. Pearson, from Original Designs made by F. W. Keyl and E. A. Smith, under the Author’s superintendence.

‘_Homes Without Hands_ is more interesting than a fairy tale, and shews how highly endowed are the inferior races, which from the very first produced in perfection works to which the nobler intellect of man could attain only after the discipline and experience of centuries. There is scarcely an invention of man of which the prototype may not be discovered in the great patent office of Nature, nor a mechanical contrivance in which he has not been anticipated by the insects and animals which he is in the habit of regarding with contempt, if not with loathing. The invention of paper was a new era in human history, but wasps made veritable paper and papier-mâché from the beginning of the world. Mankind waited through thousands of years for Professor WHEATSTONE to invent the electric telegraph, but the Arachnidæ had their lines in operation on the morning when ADAM first opened his eyes upon the world. The beaver was from the beginning conversant with the strength and virtues of the arch; the burrowing spider made use of the poppet valve; and as for the bearings of timbers and the strength of materials, birds, beasts, and insects were well acquainted with them thousands of years before VITRUVIUS or TREDGOLD or FAIRBAIRN was born. The Author, in a fascinating style and with a profusion of elegant engravings, illustrates instinctive art in all its departments, from the labours of the smallest insect up to those of the largest animal which builds itself a dwelling. To enumerate the wonders contained in the book we should be compelled to write an abstract of its contents, for each page contains something that will interest and delight the reader. It is a work calculated to bring pleasures of the most rational and elevating kind into many a school-room and many a family circle during the Christmas season; and certainly it would be impossible to recommend a more suitable book for a present to a young person.’

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POPULAR WORKS BY DR. GEORGE HARTWIG.

Just published, with 8 full-page Engravings on Wood, from Original Designs by F. W. Keyl, and about 200 Woodcuts in the Text, in One Volume, 8vo. price 18_s._

THE HARMONIES OF NATURE;

OR, THE UNITY OF CREATION.

BY DR. GEORGE HARTWIG.

‘DR. HARTWIG has produced another delightful and instructive volume, in which he illustrates the wonders of wisdom and knowledge with which creation teems. The opening chapters are devoted to a recapitulation of some of the magnificent and astonishing phænomena which are observed in the heavens, air, and sea, by way of developing the harmony which is the universal law of nature. But throughout the greater part of the work the Author confines himself to the domains of vegetable and animal life; and here he accumulates a surprising number of evidences of design, adaptation of power, and inexhaustible resource. The work exhibits a very unusual and most felicitous combination of accurate and varied erudition with clear and popular writing. It is a true instructor; for both the descriptions and the woodcuts with which they are accompanied are scientifically correct, while the narration is full of almost romantic interest. Each page has some new wonder to enchant the youthful reader and excite the reverent admiration of the thoughtful.... The reverence and piety of Dr. HARTWIG’S works are a great recommendation in days when scientific men seem to think their first duty in speaking or writing is to avoid every word that could possibly suggest the idea of a personal Deity and intelligent Creator.’

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_Works by the same Author._

The TROPICAL WORLD: a Popular Scientific Account of the Natural History of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdom in the Equatorial Regions. With 8 Chromoxylographic Plates and numerous Woodcuts. 8vo. 21_s._

The SEA and its LIVING WONDERS. With several hundred Woodcuts in the Text, and a Series of Chromoxylographic Plates from Original Designs by H. N. Humphreys. Third English Copyright Edition. 8vo. 18_s._

‘This is the third edition, considerably enlarged, of the first and best of Dr. HARTWIG’S beautiful and popular volumes on natural history. The size of the book is increased by a hundred pages; a good deal of it is remoulded; two whole new chapters have been added, one on Marine Caves, the other on Marine Constructions, such as Lighthouses and Breakwaters; some of the old illustrations have disappeared, but their place has been supplied by more and better; so that the new edition really amounts to a recasting of the entire book. It was a very good book before; it is better and more complete now. Whether we regard the letterpress or the numerous illustrations, it takes a rank second to none among ornamental and popular books of science.’

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