•298 THE ELEPHANT. [Part VIII. 



distinctive is this formation, and so self-sustaining the 

 configuration of the hmbs, that an elephant shot in 

 the brain, by Major Eogers in 1836, was killed so 

 instantaneously that it died hterally on its knees, and 

 remained resting on them. About the year 1826, 

 Captain Dawson, tlie engineer of the great road to 

 Kandy, over the Kadaganava pass, shot an elephant 

 at HangweUe on the banks of the Kalany Ganga ; it 

 remained on its feet, but so motionless, that after dis- 

 charging a few more balls, he was induced to go close 

 to it, and found it dead. 



The real peculiarity in the elephant in lying down is, 

 that he extends his hind legs backwards as a man does 

 when he kneels, instead of brinoino- them under him 

 Hke the horse or any other quadruped. The wise pur- 

 pose of this arrangement must be obvious to any one 

 who observes the struggle with which the horse gets 

 up from the ground, and the \T.olent efforts which 

 he makes to raise himself erect. Such an exertion in 

 the case of the elephant, and the force requisite to 

 apply a similar movement to raise his weight (equal to 

 four or five tons) would be attended with a dangerous 

 strain upon the muscles, and hence the simple arrange- 

 ment, which by enabhng him to draw the hind feet 

 gradually under him, assists him to rise almost without 

 a perceptible effort. 



-The same construction renders his gait not a "gallop," 

 as it has been somewhat loosely described ^, which would 

 be too \dolent a motion for so vast a body ; but a shuffle, 

 that he can increase at pleasure to a pace as rapid as 



1 Moiagcries, Sic " The Elephant," 

 ch. i. 



Sir Chaeles Bell, in his essay- 

 on Tlie Hand and its Mechanism, 

 which forms one of the " Bridgewater 

 Treatises," has exhibited the reasons 



other animals whoso strnctiu-e is de- 

 signed to facilitate agility and speed. 

 In them the various bones of the 

 shoulder and fore limbs, especially the 

 clavicle and humerus, are set at such 

 an angle, that tlie shock in descending 



deducible from organisation, which i ismodified, and the joints and sockets 

 show the incapacity of the elephant ' protected from the injuiy occasioned 

 to sj^riny or leap like the horse and 1 by concussion. But in the elephant, 



