Habit of leaning. 39 



natives of Ceylon liave pointed out that the ele- 

 phants which had preceded me must have been of con- 

 siderable size, judging from the height at which their 

 marks had been left on the trees against which they had 

 recently been rubbing. Not unfrequently the animals 

 themselves, overcome with drowsiness from the night's 

 gambolling, are found dozing and resting against the 

 trees they had so visited, and in the same manner they 

 have been discovered by sportsmen asleep, and leaning 

 against a rock. 



It is scarcely necessary to explain that the position 

 is accidental, and that it is taken by the elephant not 

 from any difficulty in lying at length on the ground, but 

 rather from the coincidence that the structure of his legs 

 affords such support in a standing position, that reclining 

 scarcely adds to his enjoyment of repose ; and elephants 

 in a state of captivity have been known for months 

 together to sleep without lying down.' So distinctive is 

 this formation, and so self-sustaining the configuration of 

 the limbs, that an elephant shot in the brain, by Major 

 Rogers in 1836, was killed so instantaneously that it 

 died literally on its knees., and remained resting on them. 

 About the year 1826, Captain Dawson, the engineer of 

 the great road to Kandy, over the Kaduganava pass, 

 shot an elephant at Hangwelle on the banks of the 



" So little is the elephant inclined to of the elephant to sleep on his legs, to 



lie down in captivity, and even after the difficulty he experiences in rising 



hard labour, that the keepers are gene- to his feet : 



rally disposed to suspect illness when .^ ^ -s. j- ■ /, .» 



•' /^ "^ Upyo<rraOi;r oe /cat KaOevoei 7rai'iUY<o9 



he betakes himself to this posture. .„ . . . - ... ., 



„ . ,. r^ ^ • , ^'' ovfc acaxTrjo-ai fiei" evvepios TreAei. 



Fhile, in his poem De Ajiiinalntm 



Proprietate, attributes the propensitj' But this is a misapprehension. 



