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 work4 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 faithfully, A. M. Ferguson, Observer Office, Colombo, December 14, 1866.”

J. Emerson Tennent.

Tempo Manor, Enniskillen:
October 1, 1866.