The Indian or Asiatic Elephant 



which the Sumatran and Cingalese animal might be 

 distinguished from the continental elephant. Both, he 

 writes, have, as compared with the African elephant, 

 the same general form and small ears, but the Sumatran 

 species is a more slender and more finely built animal 

 with a longer and more slender trunk, and the tip of 

 the tail more expanded and carrying longer and stronger 

 bristles. He then goes on to say that the Sumatran 

 elephant is more docile and intelligent than its Indian 

 brother, frorrt which it is further distinguished by 

 certain differences in the skeleton and teeth, detailed in 

 the original paper. 



The subject was again taken up by Dr. Hugh 

 Falconer in a memoir communicated to the Natural 

 History Review for January 1863, in which it was 

 shown that many of the dental and osteological 

 characters (notably an alleged difference in the number 

 ot vertebrae) were untrustworthy ; and he came to the 

 conclusion that there was but a single living Asiatic 

 species of elephant. In this he is no doubt correct ; 

 but it is important to note that in a later portion of 

 the memoir he makes the admission that this species is 

 " modified, doubtless, according to his more northern 

 or southern habitat, but not to an extent exceeding that 

 of a slight geographical variety." This is equivalent to 

 saying that there may be local " races," as now under- 

 stood, of the Asiatic species. It should, moreover, be 

 mentioned that in De Blainville's Osteographie^ published 

 from 1839 to 1864, the Ceylon elephant had been 

 designated Elephas indicus zeylanicus. 



Although nothing is said as to any local varieties 

 of the elephant in Blanford's Mammals of India^ it 

 is mentioned that the Ceylon elephant is reported to be 

 generally tuskless ; and it is evident that if this form be 

 distinguished from the continental Indian elephant, it 

 must, on distributional grounds, be also distinct from 

 the Sumatran representative of the species. It may be 

 added that Schlegel makes no mention of the rarity or 



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