The Wild Elephant and the Method of Capturing and Taming it in Ceylon

by Sir James Emerson Tennent

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.

Medal of Numidia.

Modern Hendoo.

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.

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