222 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



elephants of Africa, we should not now expect to find them so large in 

 this part of the world. There are some, however, which do not yield 

 in size to the Indian elephants ; and, without referring to Pigafetta, 

 who speaks of elephants eighteen feet high, Bosman* gives to the ele- 

 phants of Guinea from ten to thirteen feet in height, and says that he 

 saw tusks the pair of which weighed two hundred and fifty pounds 

 (livres) ; and M. Liechtenstein f relates that a Dutch planter of his 

 acquaintance had killed an elephant fourteen feet high, whose tusks 

 weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, and positively assured me, as 

 did also several of his countrymen, that they have heen sometimes seen 

 eighteen feet high, which must be understood, no doubt, of the feet of 

 the Rhine. 



Thus we can only explain what the ancients have said on this mat- 

 ter, by supposing that the elephants which the kings of Egypt, or the 

 Carthaginians, had in their armies did not attain the size which these 

 animals reach in the savage state, in the countries of Africa, where 

 they find abundant nourishment. 



8. — Of the Countries inhabited by each of the two Species of living 



Elephants. 



To conclude this history, and this comparative description of living 

 elephants, it would be necessary to determine with precision the limits 

 of the countries assigned them by nature. 



The species which we have called Indian inhabits, in fact, all India 

 on this side the Ganges, it being from that country, or from Ceylon, 

 that we obtained the numerous individuals whose skulls have been 

 observed by us : there is no reason to doubt but it is the same also 

 which is found in more remote India, and which peoples the forests of 

 Siam, of the empire of the Birmans, and these of China. 



The species called by us the African is found in Senegal, whence 

 came the skeleton made for Louis XIV., and which we still possess ; 

 and at the Cape of Good Hope, from whence the isolated skull which 

 formed the second subject of our description. There is, then, every 

 reason to believe that the intermediate countries along: the western 

 coast of Africa contain no others. 



But is that generally true of all this part of the world ? The ele- 

 phants of the eastern coast, along the Indian sea, are they of the same 

 species ? Those elephants which the kings of Egypt had learned to 

 tame, and which they employed in war with so much success, were 

 they like to those which none of the negro countries have as yet been 

 able to domesticate ? And the Carthaginians, who had so many ele- 

 phants, which they made even to cross the sea, the Alps, and the 

 Apennines, whence did they derive them, or f r om what species did 

 they take them ? These are questions which remain for critics and 

 travellers to solve. 



We know now for certain, by the inscription of Adulis (as I already 

 remarked), that it was from Abyssinia the Ptolemies obtained their 

 elephants, and it is of these same elephants of the Ptolemies that it 

 was said they were smaller, weaker, and more timid than those of 



Voyage de Guinec, p. 244. f Voyage de l'Afr. Merid. i, p. 349. 



