I So The Wild Elephant. 



his astonishment that after seeing many thousands of 

 living elephants in all possible situations, he had never 

 yet found a single skeleton of a dead one, except of those 

 which had fallen by the rifle.' 



It has been suggested that the bones of the elephant 

 may be so porous and spongy as to disappear in con- 

 sequence of an early decomposition ; but this remark 

 would not apply to the grinders or to the tusks ; besides 

 which, the inference is at variance with the fact, that not 

 only the horns and teeth, but entire skeletons of deer, 

 are frequently found in the districts inhabited by the 

 elephant. 



The natives, to account for this popular belief, declare 

 that the survivors of the herd bury such of their com- 

 panions as die a natural death. ^ It is curious that this 

 belief was current also amongst the Greeks of the Lower 

 Empire ; and Phile, writing early in the fourteenth 

 century, not only describes the younger elephants as 

 tending the Avounded, but as burying the dead : 



"Oral/ 5' eTrtcTTT; ttJs T6A6m"v}s 6 xpovo") 

 KoifoC TsAous o.p.vvav b ^eVos (pepei.^ 



' This remark regarding the elephant the elephants resort in their frequent 



of Ceylon does not appear to extend to marches, and during the course of the 



that of Africa, as I observe that Bea- proceedings two of the captured ele- 



VER, in his African Memoranda, says phants died. Their carcases were left 



that "the skeletons of old ones that have of course within the enclosure, which 



diedin the woods are frequently found." was abandoned as soon as the capture 



[African Memoranda relative to an was complete. The wild elephants re- 



attempt to establish British Settle- sumed their path through it, and a few 



?nents at the Island of Bulama. days afterwards the headman reported 



Lond. 1815, p. 353.) to Mr. Morris that the bodies had been 



^ A corral was organised near Put- removed and carried outside the corral 



lam in 1846, by Mr. Morris, the chief to a spot to which nothing but the ele- 



officer of the district. It was con- phants could have borne them, 

 structed across one of the paths to which ^ Expositio de Elcph. 1. 243. 



