170 THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
very small dimensions. But these variations are evi- 
dently the result of locality and other fortuitous circum- 
stances, the species appearing gradually to degenerate 
as it recedes from the tropics, and to improve as it 
advances towards the line. The Elephants of Ceylon 
are consequently in the highest esteem for size, beauty, 
and hardihood, and those of Pegu are but little inferior 
to them; while those of the northern districts of India 
are held in comparatively trifling estimation. 
These animals are by nature sociable, and congregate 
together in herds, which frequently amount to more 
than a hundred. The imposing spectacle furnished by 
such a collection of these immense masses of animated 
matter may well be imagined. They generally seek the 
shade of the forest, in which they find additional means 
of subsistence in the young shoots of the trees, which 
supply the place of other and more congenial herbs. 
They frequently issue from it, however, in quest of the 
latter, and also to indulge in a propensity possessed by 
them in common with all those animals which like them 
are furnished with thick and almost naked, or with 
bristly, skins, that of bathing in the water or wallowing 
in the mud. It is for this reason that they are usually 
met with in the neighbourhood of large streams, which 
their great size and the quantity of fat with which they 
are commonly loaded enable them to swim with facility. 
Their trunk is also extremely serviceable in this opera- 
tion, as it enables them to bury as it were the whole of 
their body beneath the water, retaining above the surface 
no more than the extremity of that organ for the admis- 
sion and expulsion of the air. After having been for 
some time in the water, it is said that their skin loses the 
