HYRAXES, ELEPHANTS, AND UNGULATES 285 



and hunters for ivory far into the interior, but is still to 

 be found in enormous herds in some of the more remote 

 localities of Africa. In the Cape Colony the only spot 

 where it is said still to exist is the forests of the Knysna. 



The Indian Elephant {Elephas indicus) inhabits the 

 forest-lands of British India, Ceylon, Burma, the Malay 

 Peninsula, and Sumatra. Its occurrence in Borneo in a 

 wild state has not yet been certainly ascertained. In 

 India, according to Mr. Blanford, Elephants are still found 

 wild along the base of the Himalayas, also in the great 

 forest-countries between the Ganges and the Kistna, in the 

 Western Ghats, and in the forest-clad ranges of Nagpore, 

 but in former times their range was naturally much more 

 extensive. Attempts have been made to separate the 

 Elephants of Ceylon and Sumatra from the continental 

 form as different species, but though there are some 

 grounds for so doing, the distinctions have not been 

 satisfactorily established. The Indian Elephant may be 

 regarded as a characteristic form of the Oriental Region, 

 as the African Elephant is of the Ethiopian. 



Although we are here only dealing with species of 

 mammals actually in existence, it should be borne in mind 

 that the Mammoth (E. primigenius) has only compara- 

 tively recently ceased to exist on the earth, as is proved 

 by the frozen carcasses of this Elephant that have been 

 exhumed in the tundras of Northern Siberia, and by the 

 enormous abundance of its fossil teeth, which are, even at 

 the present day, a recognized article of commerce. The 

 Mammoth had a very different distribution from the two 

 existing Elephants and was essentially Palrearctic in its 

 range, although it appears to have extended across 

 Behring Strait into Alaska. 



