Game Animals of India, etc. 



namely, 67~^r, 62-^, 61, 60-^-, and 60 inches have been 

 recorded. 



Within the area treated of in this volume, the 

 elephant inhabits the forest-districts of India, Ceylon, 

 Assam, and Burma, although now exterminated in 

 several parts of the country where it formerly flourished. 

 Indeed, were it not for the protective laws established 

 both in India and Ceylon this noble beast would have 

 long since disappeared from most of its haunts, even 

 if it had not ceased to exist. Eastwards and southwards 

 of Burma the elephant is to be met with in the Malay 

 Peninsula, Siam, and Cochin-China, as well as in the 

 great islands of Sumatra and Borneo, although in the 

 last of these its presence may be originally due to 

 human agency. 



There has long been a diff^erence of opinion as to 

 whether the Sumatran and the Ceylon elephants, which 

 were at one time grouped together, are distinct trom 

 the continental animal. So long ago as the year 1834 

 Mr. Brian Hodgson, writing in the Proceedi?igs of the 

 Zoological Society of London^ suggested that the elephant 

 of Ceylon was distinct from that of the mainland, as 

 typified by the sal-forest animal. Whether, however, 

 the two were to be regarded as species or races was left 

 an open question. According to this communication, 

 the Cingalese elephant has a smaller and lighter head, 

 and is taller at the withers than the mainland animal ; 

 while the latter sometimes has five nails on the hind- 

 foot. Nothing was, however, stated with regard to 

 the presence or absence of tusks or the relative sizes 

 of the two races. A dozen years later Temminck, 

 who apparently based his conclusions on information 

 affxDrded by his colleague Schlegel, announced that the 

 elephants of Sumatra and Ceylon indicated a species 

 distinct from the continental E. maximus (indicus\ 

 which it was proposed to call E. sumatranus ; the 

 typical form being, of course, the Sumatran elephant. 



Schlegel subsequently formulated the characters by 



12 



