Preface. xi 



phants 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 con- 

 firmatory 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 question- 

 ing the accuracy of these views as to Elephas Siimati'anus . 

 The idea of a specific distinction between the elephants of 

 India and Ceylon, Dr. Falconer shows to have been pro- 

 pounded 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 



