The Indian or Asiatic Elephant 



up-mail, while travelling at speed about half-past nine 

 through the jungles which flank the line between 

 Gaikara and Monarpur, came suddenly in collision with 

 an elephant. It was a pitch-dark night, the engine 

 appears to have struck the beast on ihe flank, for the 

 cowcatcher swept him off his legs, and he rested 

 partially on the foot-plate until the driver reduced 

 speed and his body slid down in front of the engine, 

 which now pushed him along the metals, mangling him 

 in a terrible fashion betore his remains fell over the 

 embankment. The train was travelling at a rate of 30 

 miles an hour, and the elephant was a big bull with 

 tusks 6 feet long ; and although his weight before the 

 engine helped the brake to stop the train, it was 

 derailed before it could be brought to a standstill. As 

 this collision took place on an embankment, it was 

 sheer good luck that the engine took the elephant fair 

 and square as it did. The remains ot the elephant 

 were found dead at the foot of the embankment next 

 morning ; the engine lost both its head lights in the 

 encounter, the brake-gear was injured, and the smoke- 

 box door partially battered in." 



In a letter to the Malay Mail of May 9, 1905, 

 Mr. T. R. Hubback describes certain peculiarities 

 in the tusks of an elephant shot by himself near the 

 Triang River, Malay Peninsula, in April. These tusks 

 diverged from one another at an unusually wide angle, 

 so that, while on leaving the gum the axes of the two 

 were only a foot apart, their points were separated by 

 an interval of 3 feet 3 inches, and this despite the fact 

 that the longer tusk projected only i foot 9 inches 

 from the head. More remarkable still is the backward 

 extension of the roots of the tusks into the skull, these, 

 according to the author's description, reaching upwards 

 to a point considerably behind the eye, instead ot 

 ending above the level of the root of the trunk ; that 

 is to say, just below the nasal chamber. In fact, the 

 longer tusk had a length of no less than 2 feet 8 inches 



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