t4t OEiaiNAX AETICLES. 



Elephant. One of these, which, according to Cuvier, belongs to the 

 variety called Dauiitelah by Corse, was sent to the Museum at 

 Leyden, in 1815, six years before the appearance of the second edition 

 of the " Ossemens Fossiies," (see that ed. p. 66), where it exists at 

 the present day. This skeleton agrees in all particulars with the 

 Elephant of Bengal, having only nineteen dorsal vertebrae and the 

 like number of ribs. The description which Cuvier gives of his 

 Elephas indicus seems, therefore, to have been based exclusively upon 

 his two other skeletons. Both of these, as he himself informs us, 

 were from Ceylon. He tells us this, in the Annales des Sciences 

 Naturelles, (1806, p. 148), speaking of the male which he identifies 

 with the variety, MooJcnah of Corse ; and he says the same (Oss. Poss. 

 p. 67) of the female, which he considers as belonging to the variety 

 Komarea of Corse, adding that these were the skeletons of two 

 Elephants brought from Ceylon to the Netherlands in 17S6, and 

 afterwards taken from thence to Paris.* 



Hence it appears very clear that Cuvier described his ElepTias 

 indicus from specimens of two different species, one of which agrees 

 with the Elephant of Bengal, whilst the others have all the charac- 

 ters of the Elephant of Sumatra. Since, therefore, both the latter 

 skeletons attributed by Cuvier to Ceylon, presented the characters 

 of the Elephant of Sumatra, it appeared to me to be probable that 

 the Ceylonese Elephant belonged to the Sumatran species, and not 

 to that of Bengal — the so-called Elephas indicv^. This conjecture has 

 been now wholly unexpectedly confirmed through a fortunate con- 

 junction of circumstances, in a manner which leaves no further 

 doubt on the subject. Tlie celebrated traveller Diaed, advanced in 

 years, but still endued with that untiring zeal and youthful activity 

 by which science and our National Museum have profited so largely, 

 during his long service under the government of the Netherlands, 

 passed three months in Ceylon, in 1838, on a journey undertaken 

 with the object of investigating the system of cultivation, and em- 

 ployed his leisure time in collecting the animals of the island. During 

 some Elephant-shooting expeditions, he obtained a male and female 

 Elephant from seven to eight feet high, and besides these two young 

 specimens, which he placed entire in casks filled with arrack. The 



• In the Paris Museum at the present moment, as I learn by a fiiendly com- 

 munication of Dr. Pucheran, there are, besides the skeletons of the two Ceylonese 

 Elephants, brought from Holland to Paris in 1795, and examined by Cuvier, a thii-d 

 sent by Duvaucel from Bengal. M. Pucheran confirms the fact, that both the 

 Ceylonese clephant-jkeletons have twenty dorsal vertebrae and twenty pairs of ribs. 

 He finds, however, the same number in the skeleton from Bengal. From this one 

 might be led to suppose, that the Ceylonese Elephant Ls also found in Bengal. But 

 I think it would be rash to consider' this fact established by a single observation, 

 as all the skeletons of Bengalese Elephants which I have examined have had, with- 

 out exception, only nineteen dorsal vertebrce and nineteen ribs. It is more likely 

 that Duvauccl's skeleton was taken from a Ceylonese Elephant; examples of this sort 

 being, as we shall afterwards show on the authority ef Hcer Diard, often brought 

 living to Bengal. 



