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  THE
  WILD ELEPHANT.

  LONDON
  PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.
  NEW-STREET SQUARE


[Illustration: AN ELEPHANT CORRAL.]




  THE
  WILD ELEPHANT
  AND
  _THE METHOD OF CAPTURING
  AND TAMING IT IN
  CEYLON_.

  BY
  SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT, BART.
  K.C.S. LL.D. F.R.S. &c.

  AUTHOR OF “CEYLON, AN ACCOUNT OF THE ISLAND,
  PHYSICAL, HISTORICAL, AND TOPOGRAPHICAL,”
  ETC.

  LONDON:
  LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
  1867.


  _TO_
  MY INTELLIGENT COMPANION

  IN MANY OF THE JOURNEYS THROUGHOUT THE MOUNTAINS AND
  FORESTS OF CEYLON, IN THE COURSE OF WHICH MUCH
  OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS
  VOLUME WAS COLLECTED;
  _TO_
  MAJOR SKINNER,
  CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF ROADS AND PUBLIC WORKS,
  ETC., ETC.
  ONE OF THE MOST EXPERIENCED AND VALUABLE SERVANTS OF
  THE CROWN;
  IT IS INSCRIBED,
  IN THE HOPE THAT IT MAY RECALL TO HIM THE
  PLEASANT MEMORIES WHICH IT
  AWAKES IN ME.




PREFACE.


In this volume, the chapters descriptive of the structure and habits
of the wild elephant are reprinted for the sixth time from a larger
work,[1] published originally in 1859. Since the appearance of the
First Edition, many corrections and much additional matter have been
supplied to me, chiefly from India and Ceylon, and will be found
embodied in the following pages.

To one of these in particular I feel bound to direct attention. In the
course of a more enlarged essay on the zoology of Ceylon,[2] amongst
other proofs of a geological origin for that island, distinct from
that of the adjacent continent of India, as evidenced by peculiarities
in the flora and fauna of each respectively, I had occasion to advert
to a discovery which had been recently announced by Temminck in
his _Survey of the Dutch possessions in the Indian Archipelago_,[3]
that the elephant which abounds in Sumatra (although unknown in the
adjacent island of Java), and which had theretofore been regarded as
identical in species with the Indian one, has been found to possess
peculiarities, in which it differs as much from the elephant of India
as the latter does from its African congener. On this new species, to
which the natives give the name of “_gadjah_,” TEMMINCK has conferred
the scientific designation of the _Elephas Sumatranus_. The points
which entitle it to this distinction he enumerates minutely in the
work[4] before alluded to, and they have been summarized as follows by
Prince Lucien Bonaparte.

“This species is perfectly intermediate between the Indian and African,
especially in the shape of the skull, and will certainly put an end to
the distinction between _Elephas_ and _Loxodon_, with those who admit
that anatomical genus; since although the crowns of the teeth of _E.
Sumatranus_ are more like the Asiatic animal, still the less numerous
undulated ribbons of enamel are nearly quite as wide as those forming
the lozenges of the African. The number of pairs of false ribs (which
alone vary, the true ones being always six) is fourteen, one less
than in the _Africanus_, _one_ more than in the _Indicus_; and so
it is with the dorsal vertebræ, which are twenty in the _Sumatranus_
(_twenty-one_ and _nineteen_ in the others), whilst the new species
agrees with _Africanus_ in the number of sacral vertebræ (_four_), and
with _Indicus_ in that of the caudal ones, which are _thirty-four_.”[5]


Professor SCHLEGEL of Leyden, in a paper lately submitted by him to
the Royal Academy of Sciences of Holland, (the substance of which he
obligingly communicated to me, through Baron Bentinck the Netherlands
Minister at this Court), confirmed the identity of the Ceylon
elephant with that found in the Lampongs of Sumatra. The osteological
comparison of which TEMMINCK has given the results was, he says,
conducted by himself with access to four skeletons of the latter; and
the more recent opportunity of comparing a living Sumatran elephant
with one from Bengal, served to establish other though minor points
of divergence. The Indian species is more robust and powerful; the
proboscis longer and more slender; and the extremity, (a point in which
the elephant of Sumatra resembles that of Africa,) is more flattened
and provided with coarser and longer hair than that of India.

Professor SCHLEGEL, adverting to the large export of elephants from
Ceylon to the Indian continent, which has been carried on from
time immemorial, suggests the caution with which naturalists, in
investigating this question, should first satisfy themselves whether
the elephants they examine are really natives of the mainland,
or whether they have been brought to it from the islands. “The
extraordinary fact,” he observes in his letter to me, “of the identity
thus established between the elephants of Ceylon and Sumatra, and the
points in which they are found to differ from that of Bengal, leads to
the question whether all the elephants of the Asiatic continent belong
to one single species; or whether these vast regions may not produce in
some quarter as yet unexplored the one hitherto found only in the two
islands referred to? It is highly desirable that naturalists who have
the means and opportunity, should exert themselves to discover, whether
any traces are to be found of the Ceylon elephant in the Dekkan; or of
that of Sumatra in Cochin China or Siam.”

To me the establishment of a fact so conclusively confirmatory of the
theory I had ventured to broach, was productive of great satisfaction.
But in an essay by DR. FALCONER, since published in the _Natural
History Review_ for January 1863, “On the Living and Extinct Species of
Elephants,” he adduces reasons for questioning the accuracy of these
views as to _Elephas Sumatranus_. The idea of a specific distinction
between the elephants of India and Ceylon, Dr. Falconer shows to have
been propounded as far back as 1834, by Mr. B. H. Hodgson, the eminent
ethnologist and explorer of the zoology of Nepal; Dr. Falconer’s own
inspection however of the examples of both as preserved in the Museum
of Leyden, not only did not lead him to accept the later conclusion of
SCHLEGEL and TEMMINCK, but induced him to doubt the correctness of the
statements published by the Prince of Canino, both as to the external
and the osteological characters of the Indian elephant. As to the
former, he declares that the differences between it and the elephant
of Ceylon are so trifling, as not to exceed similar peculiarities
observable between elephants taken in different regions of continental
India, where an experienced mahout will tell at a glance, whether a
newly captured animal was taken in the Sal forests of the North-Western
Provinces, in Assam, in Silhet, Chittagong, Tipperah, or Cuttack. The
osteological distinctions and the odontography, Dr. Falconer contends,
are insufficient to sustain the alleged separateness of species. He
equally discredits the alleged differences regarding the ribs and
dorsal vertebræ, and he concludes that, “on a review of the whole case,
the evidence in every aspect appears to him to fail in showing that the
elephant of Ceylon and Sumatra is of a species distinct from that of
continental India.”[6] He thinks it right, however, to add, that the
subject is one which “should be thoroughly investigated,” as the hasty
assumption that the elephants of Ceylon and Sumatra belong to distinct
species has been put forward to support the conjecture of a geological
formation for the island of Ceylon distinct from that of the mainland
of India; a proposition to which Dr. Falconer is not prepared to accede.

Having ventured to originate the latter theory, and having sustained
it by Schlegel’s authority as regards the elephant of Sumatra, I think
it is incumbent on me to give becoming prominence to the opposite
view entertained by one so eminently entitled to consideration as Dr.
Falconer.

In the course of my observations on the structure and functions of the
elephant, I have ventured an opinion that an animal of such ponderous
and peculiar construction, is formed chiefly for progression by easy
and steady paces, and is too weighty and unwieldy to leap, at least to
any considerable height or distance. But this opinion I felt bound to
advance with reserve, as I had seen in an interesting article in the
_Colombo Observer_ for March 1866, descriptive of a recent corral, the
statement that an infuriated elephant had “fairly leaped a barrier 15
feet high, only carrying away the upper crossbeam with a crash.” (See
p. 40.) Doubtful of some inaccuracy in the measurements, I took the
precaution of writing to Mr. Ferguson, the editor, to solicit further
enquiry. Since the following pages have been printed, I have received
from that gentleman the correction, which I now subjoin.

“My dear Sir Emerson,—I have just had a letter from Mr. Samuel
Jayetileke, the Cutchery Modliar of Kornegalle, in reply to my queries
about the height of the fence over which the elephant sprang. The
result is the usual one whenever exact measurements are substituted
for guess-work: I stated 15 feet as the height of the fence, and
this was the information given to me at the time. But the report of
Kumbowattewene, the Ratemahat-meya who has since gone to measure the
place, is, that where the elephant leaped over, the height was 12 feet.
The exact height of the leap was however only 9 feet; for besides that
in his rush he knocked away the top bar, it is found that in the corner
at which he escaped, there is a mound formed by a white ant’s nest, two
and a half feet high, on which he must have climbed to help him over. I
trust this information may be in time to prevent my original statement
from going forth without modification in your new book. The leap is
still a pretty good one.—Yours