Cuar. I.] ZOOLOGY OF CEYLON AND INDIA. 67 
or whether they have been brought to it from the islands.! 
“The extraordinary fact,” he observes in his letter to 
me, “of the identity thus established between the ele- 
phants of Ceylon and Sumatra; and the points in which 
they are found to differ from that of Bengal, leads to the 
question whether all the elephants of the Asiatic con- 
tinent belong to one single species ; or whether these vast 
regions may not produce in some quarter as yet unex- 
plored the one hitherto found only in the two islands 
referred to? It is highly desirable that naturalists who 
have the means and opportunity, should exert them- 
selves to discover, whether any traces are to be found 
of the Ceylon elephant in the Dekkan; or of that of 
Sumatra in Cochin China or Siam.” 
To me the establishment of a fact so conclusively 
confirmatory of the theory I had ventured to broach, is 
productive of great satisfaction. But it is not a little re- 
markable that the distinction should not long before have 
been discovered between the elephant of India and that 
of Ceylon. Nor can it be regarded otherwise than as a 
singular illustration of “ geographical distribution ” that 
two remote islands should be thus shown to possess in 
common a species unknown in any other quarter of the 
globe. As bearing on the ancient myth which represents 
both countries as forming parts of a submerged continent, 
the discovery is curious —and it is equally interesting in 
connection with the circumstance alluded to by Gibbon, 
that amongst the early geographers and even down to a 
comparatively modern date, Sumatra and Ceylon were 
confounded; and grave doubts were entertained as to 
1 A further inquiry suggests it- case of elephants bred on the con- 
self, how far the intermixture of tinent of India, from stock partially 
the breed may have served to con- imported from Ceylon? 
found specific differences, in the 
FQ 
