398 THE ELEPHAXT. [Part YIII. 



tlnvartecl ; striking out with its hind feet, tlirowing itself 

 headlong on the ground, and pressing its trunk against 

 any opposing object. 



The ancient fable of the elephant attaining the age 

 of two or tln*ee hundi'cd years is still prevalent amongst 

 the Singhalese. But the Europeans and those in im- 

 mediate charge of them entertain the opinion that the 

 duration of hfe for about seventy years is common both 

 to man and the elephant ; and that before the arrival of 

 that period, the symptoms of debihty and decay ordi- 

 narily begin to manifest themselves. Still instances are 

 not ^vanting in Ceylon of trained decoys that have 

 hved for more than double the reputed period in 

 actual servitude. One employed by ]\ir. Cripps in the 

 Seven Corles was represented by the Cooroowe people 

 to have served the king of Kandy in the same capacity 

 sixty years before ; and amongst the papers left by 

 Colonel Eobertson (son to the liistorian of " Charles Y."), 

 who held a command in Ceylon in 1799, shortly after 

 the capture of the island by the British, I have found a 

 memorandum shoAving that a decoy was then attached 

 to the elephant estabhshment at Matura, which tlie re- 

 cords proved to have served under the Dutch dming 

 the enth'e period of their occupation (extending to up- 

 wards of one hundred and forty years) ; and was said to 

 have been found in the stables by the Dutch on the ex- 

 pulsion of the Portuguese in a.d. 1656. 



It is perhaps from this popular behef of their ahnost 

 inimitable age, that the natives generaUy assert that the 

 body of a dead elephant is seldom or never to be dis- 

 covered in the woods. And certain it is that fi'equenters 

 of the forest with wdiom I have conversed, wdietlier 

 European or Singhalese, are consistent in their assurances 

 that they have never found the remains of an elephant 

 that had died a natural death. One chief, the Wannyah 

 of the Trincomahe district, told a friend of mine, that 

 once after a severe murrain, which had swept the pro- 



