396 MamMALiIA OF INDIA. 
small stick, to train it to turn in the required direction. To teach an 
elephant to kneel it is taken into water about five feet deep when the 
sun is hot, and, upon being pricked on the back with a pointed stick it 
soon lies down, partly to avoid the pain, partly from inclination for a 
bath. By taking it into shallower water daily, it is soon taught to kneel 
even on land. 
‘“‘ Elephants are taught to pick up anything from the ground by a 
rope, with a piece of wood attached, being dangled over their foreheads, 
near to the ground. The wood strikes against their trunk and fore-feet, 
and to avoid the discomfort the elephant soon takes it in its trunk, 
and carries it. It eventually learns to do this without a rope being 
attached to the object.” 
Sir Emerson Tennent’s account of the practice in erlows is similar. 
As regards the size of elephants few people agree. ‘The controversy 
is as strong on this point as on the maximum size of tigers. I quite 
believe few elephants attain to or exceed ten feet, still there are one or 
two recorded instances, the most trustworthy of which is Mr. Sander- 
son’s measurement of the Sirmoor Rajah’s elephant, which is 1o ft. 73 in. 
at the shoulder—a truly enormous animal. Ihave heard of a tusker 
at Hyderabad that is over eleven feet, but we must hold this open to 
doubt till an accurate measurement, for which I have applied, isreceived. 
Elephants should be measured like a horse, with a standard and cross 
bar, and not by means of a piece of string over the rounded muscles of 
the ‘shoulder. Kellaart, usually a most accurate observer, mentions in his 
‘Prodromus Faunze Zeylanicz’ ‘his having measured a Ceylon elephant 
nearly twelve feet high, but does not say how it was done. Sir Joseph 
Fayrer has a photograph of an enormous elephant belonging to the late 
Sir Jung Bahadur, a perfect mountain of flesh. 
WE in India have nothing to do with the next order, HyRAcoIDEA or 
Conies, which are small animals, somewhat resembling short-eared 
rabbits, but which from their dentition and skeleton are allied to the 
rhinoceros and tapir. The Syrian coney is frequently mentioned in 
the Old Testament, and was one of the animals prohibited for food to 
the Jews, ‘because he cheweth the cud and divideth not the hoof.” 
The chewing of the cud was a mistake, for the coney does not do so, 
but it has a way of moving its jaws which might lead to the idea that it 
ruminates. In other parts of Scripture the habits of the animal are 
more accurately depicted“ The rocks are a refuge for the conies ;” and 
again: “The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses 
in the rocks.” Solomon says in the Proverbs: “There be four things 
