OF LIVING ELEPHANTS- ,221 



7. — Varieties relative to the Size. 



Several naturalists having written that the fossil bones were in gene- 

 ral of a monstrous size, and much beyond that of the living species 

 corresponding to them, it was necessary to examine what size ele- 

 phants of the present day attain in the countries which they inhabit. 

 Unfortunately the number of testimonies to be consulted is not consi- 

 derable ; for, on such a matter, we cannot refer to the vague assertions 

 of so many travellers ; we want precise dimensions, taken immediately 

 from the animal, and referred to known measures. 



We have satisfied ourselves, by the animals which lived in the me- 

 nagerie, and which we dissected, that the elephant may attain nearly 

 eight feet in height at the withers, without yet having the epiphyses 

 united to the bodies of the bones, and, consequently, without being 

 entirely adult : our male komarea, of which the epiphyses are still 

 distinct, was not entirely eight feet ; but his female, which lived some 

 years longer, and whose height was eight feet two inches, presents no 

 separation of those parts. 



It does not appear that the domestic elephants attain at present 

 much abbve this size. 



According to M. Corse, who had for a long time the care of the 

 elephants of the India company, the height of the females is generally 

 from seven to eight feet (English), that of the males from eight to ten. 

 The largest of which this attentive observer heard mention made, was, 

 from the top of the head down, twelve feet two inches ; from the 

 shoulders ten feet six inches, and from the forehead to the origin of the 

 tail fifteen feet eleven inches (always English measure) : this is not 

 nine feet and a half at the withers. Out of one hundred and fifty 

 elephants employed by the India Company against Tippoo, there was 

 not one ten English feet, that is, nine feet two inches. 



I observe that this height of about from nine to ten feet was 

 remarked on the elephant seen at Constantinople in the sixteenth 

 century by Gillius*, and in an elephant seen in 1 629 at Nuremberg ; 

 another, observed in this latter city by Sturm, was but nine ; that of 

 • Naples, described by Serao, and of which Buffon has given a drawing, 

 was nine feet two inches. Three elephants which I saw alive, besides 

 those which I dissected, were all smaller than the latter. It would 

 appear, then, that we might regard the ordinary size of the elephants 

 in the state of slavery, as being from nine to ten feet. 



How r ever, it cannot be denied that certain individuals of them have 

 gone far beyond these dimensions ; and, without attaching credit to 

 the twenty-seven feet given to that of Cosroes, without even wishing to 

 support my assertion on the nineteen feet attributed by G. J. Sauer to 

 his own, I may quote the elephant preserved in the Cabinet of the 

 Academy of Petersburgh, which is sixteen feet and a half in heightf. 

 This elephant came from India, and was given to Peter the Great by 

 the king of Persia. 



From all that the ancients have said of the relative smallness of the 



* Elephanti Nova Descriptio. Hamb. 1614. 



f Essai sur la Bibl. et le Cab. de l'Ac. de Fetersbourg, par Bacmeister. Fetersb. 

 1776. 8vo. p. 139. 



