SIR EMERSON TENNENTS THEORY ABOUT TUSKS. 65 



Before treating on this question I must refer to Sir Emerson Tennent's 

 work, The, Wild Elephant, published originally in 1859, and again in 1866. 

 This is, I believe, the most recent work on the elephant, and has been ser- 

 viceable in removing some of the grossest misapprehensions regarding it ; but 

 it is fuU of the errors which are unavoidable when a man writes on a subject 

 with which he has no practical acquaintance, and musters information with- 

 out having sufficient knowledge to enable him to choose the good and reject 

 the evil. The book is written in such a fascinating and earnest style that 

 it is difficult to believe that the author is mostly romancing, and before I 

 knew anything of elephants I revelled in his descriptions. But when on 

 even short personal acquaintance with the noble animal I found that, amongst 

 his numerous accomplishments, the power to take all four feet off the ground 

 at the same moment was not one, I was obliged to conclude that the elephant 

 in the case quoted by Sir Emerson as having cleared a barricade 15 feet 

 high, only carrying away the top bar, could not have accomplished the feat , 

 and though Sir Emerson subsequently wrote to the person from whom he 

 had the information, who wrote to the Cutchery Modliar of Kornegalle who 

 had told him, who sent a native to measure the place again, who said he 

 found the elephant had only made a clear jump of 9 feet, because he had 

 climbed on to a white-ant's hill from which he sprang, I found myself unable 

 to place further belief in the author. More extended acquaintance with 

 elephants entirely dissipated my faith in the wild elephant of Sir Emerson 

 Tennent's imagination and of my inexperienced days. Sir Emerson Ten- 

 nent has, in many places in his work, substituted theory and fancy for fact. 



In the above matter of tusks he has indulged in pure theory. In his 

 account of the two or three captures of elephants he witnessed (the largest 

 number caught at one time being apparently nine), he does not mention any 

 tuskers having been taken, though the artist in the illustrations to his work 

 (which are excellent and lifelike pictures) has thrown in a tusker amongst 

 the captives. Sir Emerson Tennent being confessedly no sportsman prob- 

 ably never saw a wild tusker. In Ceylon tuskers are few and far between, and 

 no one but a sportsman who constantly followed elephants would be likely 

 to fall in with them. 



Far from tusks being useless appendages to elephants, and of Uttk 

 service for offence, they are amongst the most formidable of any weapons 

 with which Nature has furnished her creatures, and none are used with 

 more address. They are not placed almost vertically, as stated by Sir 

 Emerson Tennent,"^'' and they can be used at almost any angle. In a herd 

 of elephants the tuskers maintain the height of discipline. Every individual 



* This will be seen in the illustrations of elephants. 

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