Footnote 951: [(return)]
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 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.
Footnote 961: [(return)]
Menageries, &c., "The Elephant," p. 27.
Footnote 962: [(return)]
Major ROGERS. An account of this singular adventure will be found in the Ceylon Miscellany for 1842, vol. i. p. 221.
Footnote 963: [(return)]
Menageries, &c., "The Elephant," ch. iii. p. 68.
Footnote 971: [(return)]
ARISTOTLE, De Anim., lib. iv. c. 9. "[Greek: homoion salpingi]." See also PLINY, lib. x. ch. cxiii. A manuscript 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 form of trumpets with expanded mouths. See WRIGHT'S Archæological Album, p. 176.
Footnote 981: [(return)]
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.
Footnote 982: [(return)]
For an explanation of the term "rogue" as applied to an elephant, see p. 115.
Footnote 983: [(return)]
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.
Footnote 991: [(return)]
SHAW'S Zoology. Lond. 1806. vol. i. p. 216; ARMANDI, Hist. Milit. des Eléphans, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2.
Footnote 992: [(return)]
WOLF'S Life and Adventures, &c., 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.