404 ELEPnANTlDiE, 



skeleton*, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, measures 11 feet 

 3 in., so the animal when living, if the skeleton is correctly mounted, 

 must have been nearly 12 feet higli. Kelaart records having seen a 

 Ceyloji elephant of the same dimensions. A male 9 ft. 7 in. high 

 measured 26 ft. 2| in. from tip of trunk to end of tail. Weight of a 

 male 8 feet high, 57cwt. ; of a, female 7 ft, 6 in. high, 51 cvvt. (P. Z. S. 

 1881, p. 450). The last two animals were not full-grown. Tusks 

 vary greatly, the longest recorded I believe (Sir V. Brooke's, from 

 Mysore) measured 8 ft. and weighed 90 lbs., but a shorter tusk 

 from Gorakhpur is said to have weighed 100 lbs. Both were from 

 elephants with but one tusk perfect. Two pairs from the Garo 

 hills are said to have weighed 157 and 155 lbs. respectively (' Asian,' 

 October 16th, 1888, p. 35). 



iJistrihutlon. The forest-clad portions of India, Ceylon, Assam, 

 Burma, Siam, Cochin China, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, aud 

 Borneo, perhaps introduced in the last named. In India elephants 

 are still found wild along the base of the Himalayas as far west 

 as Dehra Dun ; also in places in the great forest country between 

 the Ganges and Kistna as far west as Bilaspur and Mandla, in the 

 Western Ghats as far north as 17° or 18°, and in some of the 

 forest-clad ranges in Mysore and farther south. They do not 

 appear to ascend the Himalayas to any elevation, but are sometimes 

 found at considerable heights above the sea in Southern India, and 

 in Ceylon they wander at times near Newera Ellia to over 7000 

 feet. Eormerly the range of the ele])hant in India was greater ; 

 it was found wild about a.d. 1600 in Malvva and Nimar (Ain-i- 

 Akbari, Gladwin's translation, ii, pp. 45 & 63), and at a much more 

 recent date in Chiinda, Central Provinces. 



Ilahits. The following summary is chiefly taken from the 

 admirable description by Sanderson in ' Thirteen years among the 

 Wild Beasts of India,' chapters vi, viii, &c. Sir Emerson Teiment's 

 account of the Ceylon elephants, though often quoted, is not, like 

 Sanderson's, the result of personal observation, and is less accurate. 



The country chiefly inhabited by elephants is tree-forest, un- 

 dulating or hilly, generally containing bamboos in considerable 

 quantities, but the animals often enter the high grass growing on 

 alluvial flats. Individuals of various sizes and ages, and of both 

 sexes, associate in herds, usually numbering 30 to 50, but not 

 uncommonly more, sometimes 100. These herds often break up 

 temporarily into smaller groups. The males are frequently found 

 alone, but as a rule each belongs to a herd and joins it occasionally. 



* Tlie animal, I believe, ■when alive was the tusker of a small herd that for 

 miiny years haunted the country north of the Eaiiigauj coal-field, from Soory and 

 the southern spurs of the Eajniehal hills to Jaiutara. Tiiough 1 never came 

 across them I often i^card of tliem, and saw their old tracks between 1850 and 

 1800. Some fossil Indian ele])liants, for instance E. gancsa and E. namadicus, 

 probably surpassed all living elejihants in stature. 



Since the above was written, I have been told by Mr. Sanderson that he 

 compared the femur of the Calcutta skeleton with that of an clepliant known to 

 have been less than 10 feet high, and only found one-eight li im-li dilfcrence in 

 length. 



