THE INDIAN ELEPHANT. 391 



the contest was not concluded till five kings and many thousands 

 of their subjects had been killed. " To support such a heavy 

 super- structure as the enormous body of the elephant,, the legs 

 are solid and compact formed more with regard to strength 

 than flexibility,* fitted, in fact, to bear an enormous weight 

 upon a level surface, without any violent strains produced by 

 sudden bounds, or by the necessity of ascending or descending 

 great elevations. Hence the elephant has not the elastic ligament 

 which, in almost all mammals, connects the head of the thigh- 

 bone with the pelvis, and which gives the hind-legs power to 

 resist the strain which is produced by traversing irregular 

 surfaces. The elephant is indeed found in the neighbourhood 

 of mountainous ranges ; and, under the command of man, 

 certainly ascends rocky passes, bearing a considerable weight ; 

 but that such an ascent is a violation of his natural habits is 

 evident from the fact, that in these situations he is liable to fall 

 backward, not having the power of resistance in his hind-legs. "f 



* Our forefathers believed that the elephant had no joints, and never lay 

 down. In the Dialogues of Creatures Moralized, a translation of an ancient 

 and very curious Latin work, mention is made of " the olefawnte that boweth 

 not the knees" Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida (Act II. Scene 3), makes 

 Ulysses say the elephant's legs are " for necessity, not for flexure." In the 

 play of All Fools (1605), a character hopes " you are no elephant, you have 

 joints ;" and in a later play, All's Lost by Lust (1633), a woman is said to be 

 " as stubborn as an elephant's leg, no bending in her." These quotations 

 suflSciently show that the notion was popular. Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas 

 Heyden), in his Brief Natural History (Lond. 1669), refutes several common 

 notions, and amongst others " that the mole hath no eyes, nor the elephant 

 knees; both which, by daily and manifest experience, are found to be 

 untrue" (p. 89). J. H. F. 



f Menageries (1831), vol. ii. p. 41. Bernier, in his Travels in the Mogul 

 Empire (vol. ii. pp. 129 and 149), notices the extreme caution with which 

 elephants ascend craggy steeps ; and relates that while a long line of elephants 

 were ascending the Peer-Punchal mountains, the foremost, perhaps appalled 

 by the great length and acclivity of the path before him, stepped back upon 

 the second elephant, who being pushed against the third, and that against the 

 fourth, and so on, no less than fifteen elephants, unable to turn round or 

 extricate themselves in a road so steep and narrow, fell down the precipice. 

 M. Ruppell, however, says, that African elephants often cross table-lands 

 in Abyssinia, between eight and nine thousand feet high, and with, of course, 

 a very cold temperature. J. H. F. 



