34 The Wild Elephant. 



appears to have been embodied in his lost work on India. 

 But although Aristotle generally receives the credit of 

 having exposed and demolished the fallacy of Ctesias,^ it 

 Avill be seen by a reference to his treatise On the Progres- 

 sive Motions of Animals, that in reality he approached 

 the question with some hesitation, and has not only left 

 it doubtful in one passage whether the elephant has 

 joints in his knee, although he demonstrates that it has 

 joints in the shoulders ; ^ but in another he distinctly 

 affirms that on account of his weight the elephant cannot 

 bend his forelegs together, but only one at a time, and 

 reclines to sleep on that particular side.^ 



So great was the authority of Aristotle, that ^lian, 

 who wrote two centuries later and borrowed many of his 

 statements from the works of his predecessor, perpetuates 

 this error ; and, after describing the exploits of the 

 trained elephants exhibited at Rome, adds the expres- 

 sion of his surprise, that an animal without joints (amp- 



' In his Natural History, Arjs- X\\e^?,^, are i7wved in consequence of an 



TOTLE speaks of Ctesias as ou'k uiv iiijlection taking place either in their 



dftoTTitr-os. (L. viii. c 27.) shoulders or hifis." (Aristotle, De 



' " When an animal moves progres- Ingressu Atiim. ch. ix. Taylor's 



sively an hypothenuse is. produced, Transl.) 



which is equal in power to the magni- " Aristotle, De Animal. lih. ii. 



tude that is quiescent, and to that ch. i. It is curious that Taylor, in his 



which is intermediate. But since the translation of this passage, was so 



members are equal, it is necessary that strongly imbued with the "grey-headed 



the member which is quiescent should errour," that in order to elucidate the 



be inflected either in the knee or in the somewhat obscure meaning of Aristotle, 



incurvation, i/ the animal that ■zvalks he has actually interpolated the text 



is without knees. It is possible, how- with the exploded fallacy of Ctesias, 



ever, for the leg to be moved, when and after the word reclining to sleep, has 



not inflected, in the same manner as inserted the words "'leaning against 



infants creep ; and there is an ancient some luall or tree" v/\dchs.Ts not to hs 



report of this kind about elephants, found in the original, 

 which is not true, for such animals as 



