OF LIVING ELEPHANTS. 209 



from Ethiopia and the country of the Troglodytes, that is to say, from 

 the countries situated towards the Indian sea*. Ptolomseus III., Euer- 

 getes, the author of this inscription, seems already to pride himself for 

 having with these elephants made him self master of the elephants of India, 

 possessed apparently by the king of Syria, Antiochus Theus, against 

 whom it is known that he waged a successful war. The same Cosmaa 

 says, that the Ethiopians knew not how to equip these elephants. f 



Thus though on all these occasions the armies which possessed only 

 African elephants may have been victorious, the superiority of the In- 

 dian elephants, in size and in courage, was nevertheless a thing ge- 

 nerally admitted among the antients. DiodorusJ, Pliny§, Philostra- 

 tus||, and Solinus^, speak of it in a general way; but none of these 

 authors, nor the historians from whom they probably derived their 

 statements, make known the sensible characters, from which one 

 might conclude that this superiority was owing to a difference in 

 species. Diodorus** even attributes it expressly to the circumstance 

 of India furnishing them with better pastures. With respect to the 

 distinction established by Philostratus between the elephants of moun- 

 tains, of plains, and of marshes, and with respect to the differences in 

 their natural constitution, and their ivory, one should suppose that if 

 •they are real, they constitute only mere varieties. 



Amintianus, in his treatise on elephants, according to a scholiast 

 of Piudar, quoted by Gesner, page 378, had however observed a posi- 

 tive and true character : " It is this, that the males only have tusks in 

 the Indian species, and that the two sexes have them in that of Lybia 

 and Ethiopia. 



Cosmas had also expressed something similar. 



" The elephants of India," said he, "have no long tusks, and when 

 they should have them, the Indians would cut them, for fear that the 

 weight of those arms might impede them in their combats." 



" But Ethiopia has many elephants provided with long tusks, and 

 some of them have been exported thence in vessels to India, Persia, 

 into the country of the Homerites,"and through the entire Romanff 

 empire." 



But all these indications were too vague for naturalists, and excited 

 no attention whatever in the moderns. 



Thus the first distinction of elephants truly specific, that which is 

 founded on the intimate structure of their molar teeth, is due entirely 

 to P. Camper. Though he has not written any thing on it, the plates 

 wherein he represented them, and testimonies of his son and of M. 

 Faujas prove his title to it.JJ 



M. Blumenbach also remarked the circumstance; he characterized 



* Cosmas, Indico-pleustes ap. Thevenot, divers voyages, tome i, p. 8, de Cosmas, 

 et ap. Montfaucon, Coll. nov. patr. 11, 141. 

 t Ibid. 339. 



tDiod. Sic, lib. 11, p. 121, Wechell's edition, 85 of Henry Stephens'. 

 § Plin. Book viii, chap. 11. 

 II Philost. Vit. ApoUon. book 11, c. 6. 

 ^ Solin. c. 25. 

 ** Diod. loc. cit. 



tt Cosmas, Indico-pleustes ap. Montfaucon Coll. nov. patr. ii, 339. 

 ^X Descript. Anatom. d' un Elephant, p. 16 : and Faujas, Essai de Geologic, i, 246. 



