A CHAT ABOUT INDIAN WILD BEASTS. 171 
“When the British captured Ceylon, a memorandum was 
found, left by Colonel Robertson, who was in command of the 
island in 1799, which stated that an Elephant attached to the 
establishment at Matura had served under the Dutch for upwards 
of one hundred and forty years—during the entire period of the 
occupation from the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1656, and 
found by them in the stables when they took possession of the 
island. The stories of Elephants living to an immense age 
in India I put no trust in, because with any favourite Elephants 
in former days (when the Jemadar had the naming of them) 
they had special names; and as their vocabulary of names was 
but limited, they used to give three or four Elephants the 
same name, as, for instance, ‘Pobun Peary No. I., Pobun 
Peary II., Pobun Peary III.’ Pobun means the wind, and an 
Elephant in the depét possessing swift and easy paces would 
go by the name of Pobun, and when Pobun I. died Pobun II. be- 
came No. I., and so on, and a new one christened No. III. These 
appeared in the office books, while the casualty rolls were kept 
merely on fly-sheets, and were after a while disposed of as waste 
paper, and therefore no check was possible to the true identifi- 
cation of an Elephant; and as no trace could be found except in 
the office books, which simply showed the same names of 
Elephants running on continuously year after year, it appeared 
as if they (the Elephants) reached an extraordinary age. But 
all this has now been altered, and better books kept. I consider 
an Hlephant to be at its prime about thirty-five or forty, and 
capable of working up to seventy or eighty years of age. An 
Hlephant’s life may extend rather longer than a human being’s, 
but not by much; but I do not believe in animals (except a very 
occasional one) living up to 150 years. There are mahouts 
whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-great-great-grandfathers 
were all mahouts, and my opinion is founded on theirs, supple- 
mented by my own observations of the past thirty years.” 
Rurnoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis). 
There are three well-known varieties of Rhinoceros found in 
India, and perhaps there are two other varieties. FR. indicus is 
the largest, the dimensions of one I killed being—extreme length 
