UNITY OR PLURALITY OF SPECIES. 259 



Osteol. Cat.) is preserved in the Museum of the College of 

 Surgeons, the other in the Zoological Department of the 

 British Museum. The former is of a large Ceylon Elephant, 

 which bears the open canals (one of them nine inches 

 deep) of three bullet wounds, of old date, that had been 

 repaired by nature, in addition to its recent death wounds ; 

 the latter, of a most destructive Solitary, or ' Goondah ' wild 

 Elephant, which for a long time was the terror of a district 

 near which I then resided. It was killed in the jungles, on 

 the banks of the Ganges, at no great distance from Meerut, 

 in May, 1833, by a party of four experienced sportsmen, who 

 went out for the express purpose of killing it. The savage 

 animal made no fewer than twenty-three desperate and 

 gallant charges against a battery of at least sixteen double- 

 barrelled guns, to which it was exposed on each occasion, 

 and fell, after several hours, with its skull literally riddled 

 with bullets. Besides the shot-holes of its last engagement, 

 the frontal plateau alone bears, above the nasals, the healed 

 canals of at least sixteen bullet-wounds received in previous 

 encounters, exclusive of those effaced by the confluent fissures 

 of its latest wounds. Meerut is in lat. 29°, close to the ex- 

 treme northern limit of habitat of the Indian Elephant. If 

 the two skulls, from localities so wide apart, are compared, 

 they agree in general form and proportions, and also in the 

 details of the pyramidal summit, long concave frontal plateau, 

 inial fossa, occipital bosses, nasal apei'ture, position of the 

 orbits, form and connections of the lachrymary, length of 

 incisive sheaths, &c. 



On the other hand, in all the well-determined species, 

 fossil or recent, of which perfect crania are known, we in- 

 variably find that the latter yield strongly-marked distinctive 

 characters even when molar teeth are similar. In illustration 

 I may cite E. primigenius, E. Indicus, E. Hysudricus, E. 

 Namadicus, E. planifrons, E. meridionalis, and E. Africanus, 

 in no two of which are the crania alike ; while in the 

 Ceylon and Indian Elephants they are so closely similar, 

 that, in a museum, without a record, the mere form will not 

 instruct the observer whence the specimen came — whether 

 continental or insular. The statement made in the Zoological 

 Proceedings of 1849, as to the amount of difference, is clearly 

 an exaggeration (antea, p. 255). 



As regards the molar teeth, it is stated in Temminck's 

 ' Coup d'ceil,' in reference to the discs of wear, that, ' ces 

 rubans sont de^ la largeur de ceux qu'on voit a la couronne 

 des dents de l'Elephant d'Afrique ; ils sont consequemment 

 moins nombreux que dans celui du continent de l'Asie.' In 



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