68 ELEPHANTS NOT DECREASING IN INDIA. 



they do not appear to be at all necessary to the elephant. Female elephants 

 use them amongst themselves in striking each other, raising their trunks in 

 doing so, and bearing downwards with their tushes. These tushes are never 

 renewed. A young female which I had, in trying to overturn a tree, broke 

 both her tushes one after the other. 



The only pace of the elephant is the walk, capable of being increased to 

 a fast shuffle of about fifteen miles an hour for a very short distance. It 

 can neither trot, canter, nor gallop. It does not move with the legs on the 

 same side together, but nearly so. A very good runner might keep out of 

 an elephant's way on a smooth piece of turf ; but in the ground in which 

 they are generally met, any attempt to escape by flight, unless supplemented 

 by concealment, would be unavailing. 



As before stated, an elephant cannot jump, and, though very clever in 

 surmounting obstacles, can never have all four feet off the ground together. 

 Whether it is the peculiar formation of the hind-legs, with knees instead of 

 hocks, or the weight and bulk of the animal that incapacitates him, I cannot 

 say, but he is physically incapable of making the smallest spring, either in 

 vertical height or horizontal distance. Thus a trench seven feet wide i& 

 impassable to an elephant, though the step of a large one in full stride is 

 about six and a half feet. 



The idea that wild elephants have decreased of late years is not uncom- 

 mon in India. It appears to have arisen from the fact of orders having, 

 been issued of late years by the Supreme and Local Governments for their 

 protection ; also from their undoubted decrease in Ceylon. But the case 

 of that island is hardly analogous to that of the continent. In Ceylon 

 elephants have always been made a peculiar object of pursuit by large 

 numbers of sportsmen and paid native hunters, whilst their range is not 

 without its limits. In continental India the actual numbers shot by Euro- 

 pean sportsmen has always been very small, and it was only for a few years 

 that natives were induced to turn their attention to killing them by a 

 reward given for their destruction in the Madras Presidency. This was 

 soon withdrawn, when the natives' interest in their pursuit ceased ; and the 

 representations of humane officials having further led to the curtailment of 

 the wasteful methods of trapping them practised by native hunters, the wild 

 elephant now enjoys perfect immunity tliroughout the Western Ghats, and 

 those boundless jungles extending for hundreds of miles along the foot of 

 the Himalayas into Burmah and Siam. The number annually caught by 

 the Government establishments is comparatively very small ; and there is no 

 doubt that all the forest ground that can be legitimately allowed to the 

 wild elephant is as fuUy occupied at present as is desirable. I have ex- 



