266 WILD ANIMALS. 



It is produced by rapping the end of the trunk smartly on the 

 ground, a current of air, hitherto retained, being sharply emitted 

 through the trunk, as from a valve, at the moment of impact. 

 The sound made resembles that of a large sheet of tin rapidly 

 doubled. It has been erroneously ascribed by some writers to 

 the animals beating their sides with their trunks." 



The average size of the elephant depends on its species and the 

 locality of its habitation. The African animal varies between ten 

 and twelve feet, being generally over a foot larger than the Indian, 

 which seems to average between eight and ten feet. Mr. Sanderson, 

 after saying there is little doubt there is not an elephant ten feet 

 at the shoulder in India, continues, " The usually received notions 

 of the height which elephants attain are much in excess of fact ; 

 out of some hundreds of tame and newly caught elephants which 

 I have seen in the south of India and in Bengal, also from 

 Burmah and different parts of India, and of which I have care- 

 fully measured all the largest individuals, I have not seen one ten 

 feet in vertical height at the shoulder." Subsequently he did see 

 one ten feet seven and a half inches in vertical height at the 

 withers, but he pronounced it to be not less phenomenal than a 

 human being eight feet high. 



Captivity reduces the longevity of the elephant considerably. 

 There seems to be little doubt that in a wild state they will live to 

 attain any age between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and 

 fifty, but when deprived of freedom they very rarely live to be a 

 hundred, occasionally attaining eighty, but more often dying at a 

 considerably earlier age, the death-rate among the newly captured 

 animals being very great after they have been subjected to the 

 change of life for two or three years. 



A writer in " Notes and Queries " says : " Lord Northbrook, 

 .in 1874, made public entry into Agra seated on the same elephant 

 which since 1797 had borne Sir J. Shore, Lord Wellesley, Lord 

 Hastings, and all the other Governors-General of our Indian 

 possessions down to the present time. As in 1797 to take part in 

 such an imposing ceremony as the public entry of a Governor- 

 General into the second city of the old Mogul Empire the elephant 

 would be at least twenty-five years old, it foUows that now he 



