The Osteology of the Elephant. From the India Sporting Review. 



I am induced to take the following subject for my first essay in the 

 pages of the India Sporting Review, (to which be length of days and 

 unrivalled success,) by the simple fact, that of the engravings pro- 

 duced in Europe, affecting to be faithful representations of 



" The huge earth-shaking beast, 

 The beast that hath between his eyes 

 The Serpent for a hand" — 



Scarce one in the dozen does not outrage nature most unmercifully; 

 of course I include under this head neither all illustrations of Zoo- 

 logy, nor the productions of artists, professional or amateur, resident 

 in India : though in several lithographs after the latter, which have 

 fallen under my inspection, I could point out errors, probably not 

 existing in their original drawings while many of the former are 

 radically wrong. The prevailing absurdity in the engravings I al- 

 lude to, is giving the elephant hocks I ! ! the perpetrators of which 

 would appear to have adopted the idea (and selected their model 

 accordingly) of the elderly Scotch lady in c The Last of the Lairds.' 

 who exclaims, while admiring a painting of a tiger-hunt — " Eek ! 

 Sirs ! wha'd ha'e thought it? — that y'r elephant, after a, shauld be 

 naithing mair than a muckle pig wi a langer snoot," — a deprecatory 

 comparison truly of the animal on which Milton has deservedly 

 bestowed the epithet " half- reasoning." Leaving his mental capacity 

 in such excellent hands, I proceed to the object I have in view, a 

 delineation of his bodily peculiarities, and of the machinery by which 

 such a mass of living flesh and blood performs it's functions. 



It is well known that the sculptor or painter who should attempt 

 the human form, without adequate knowledge of the osseous frame- 

 work and its muscular clothing, would produce but a sorry resem- 

 blance of the paragon of animals ! In like manner, ignorance of the 

 internal structure of the elephant, so unlike that of all other quad- 

 rupeds, has doubtless caused these numerous false drawings of it's 

 external appearance, and which I presume to think the annexed out- 

 lines will serve to rectify. The design of the first was sketched 



