The African elephant is of larger size as a rule, with enormously developed ears, which quite overlap his withers. The forehead recedes, and the trunk is more coarsely ringed; the tusks are larger, some almost reaching the size of those mentioned above in the fossil head at the museum. An old friend of mine, well known to all the civilised—and a great portion of the uncivilised—world, Sir Samuel Baker, had, and may still have, in his possession a tusk measuring ten feet nine inches. This of course includes the portion within the socket, whereas my measurement of the fossil is from the socket to tip.
The lamination of the molar teeth also is very distinct in the two species, as I have before stated—the African being in acute lozenges, the Indian in wavy undulations.
Another point of divergence is, that the African elephant has only three nails on the hind feet, whereas the Asiatic has four.
[NO. 425. ELEPHAS INDICUS.]
The Indian or Asiatic Elephant (Jerdon's No. 211).
NATIVE NAMES.—Hasti or Gaja, Sanscrit; Gaj, Bengali; Hati, Hindi; Ani in Southern India, i.e. in Tamil, Telegu, Canarese, and Malabari; Feel, Persian; Allia, Singhalese; Gadjah, Malayan; Shañh, Burmese.
HABITAT.—India, in most of the large forests at the foot of the Himalayas from Dehra Doon down to the Bhotan Terai; in the Garo hills, Assam; in some parts of Central and Southern India; in Ceylon and in Burmah, from thence extending further to Siam, Sumatra and Borneo.
DESCRIPTION.—Head oblong, with concave forehead; small ears as compared with the African animal; small eyes, lighter colour, and four instead of three nails on the hind foot; the laminations of the molar teeth in wavy undulations instead of sharp lozenges, as in the African, the tusks also being much smaller in the female, instead of almost equal in both sexes.
SIZE.—The maximum height appears to be about 11 feet, in fact the only authentic measurement we have at present is 10 feet 7 inches.
"The huge elephant, wisest of brutes,"
has had a good deal of the romance about it taken away by modern observers. The staid appearance of the animal, with the intellectual aspect contributed by the enormous cranial development, combined with its undoubted docility and aptitude for comprehending signs, have led to exaggerated ideas of its intelligence, which probably does not exceed that of the horse, and is far inferior to that of the dog. But from time immemorial it has been surrounded by a halo of romance and exaggeration. Mr. Sanderson says, however, that the natives of India never speak of it as an intelligent animal, "and it does not figure in their ancient literature for its wisdom, as do the fox, the crow, and the monkey;" but he overlooks the fact that the Hindu god of wisdom, Gunesh, is always depicted with the body of a man, but the head of an elephant. However this is apparently an oversight, for both in his book and lecture he alludes to Gunesh. The rest of his remarks are so good, and show so much practical knowledge, that I shall take the liberty of quoting in extenso from a lecture delivered by him at Simla last year, a printed copy of which he kindly sent me, and also from his interesting book, 'Thirteen Years amongst the Wild Beasts.'