THE INDIAN ELEPHANT. 



225 



I may say that out of one bundrecl and forty elephants captured 

 by me in keddahs in Mysore and Bengal in 1874 and 1876, the 

 tallest females were just 8 feet. The above are vertical measure- 

 ments at the shoulder There is little doubt that there 



is not an elephant 10 feet at the shoulder in India." 



Mr. Corse also makes the following statement : 



" During the war with Tippoo Sultan, of the one hundred and 

 fifty elephants under the management of Captain Sandys not one 

 was 10 feet high, and only a few males 9^- feet high." 



The following table, showing the rate of an elephant's growth, 

 has been compiled from sources of undoubted authenticity — chiefly 

 from the two authors quoted above — and is submitted in the be- 

 lief that the figures are correci 



Table of Growth of a IVLvle Elephant. 



As may readily be inferred from the relative size of the species, 

 the Afifican elephant has the larger tusks. The largest tusk taken 

 bv Gordon Cumming during his famous hunt for ivorv was 10 feet 

 8 inches long and weighed one hundred and seventy-three pounds. 

 I have never seen a Avell-authenticated record of a larger single 

 tusk, although Cuvier, on hearsay evidence, mentions a tusk sold 

 in Amsterdam as weighing three hundred pounds. It was very 

 probably a pair. The tusks of the Indian elephant are, in general 

 terms, about half the average length and weight of the Afi'ican. The 

 largest tusk ever taken in India, so far as can be ascertained, was 8 

 feet in length and weighed ninety pounds, which may be regarded 

 as one out of ten thousand. The largest taken by Sanderson out 

 of twenty elephants shot, was five feet in length and weighed 

 thirty-seven and one-half pounds, which may justly be considered a 

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