Chap. II.] 
THE ELEPHANT. 
77 
them, alike on the summits of the loftiest mountains, 
and on the borders of the tanks and lowland streams. 
From time immemorial the natives have been taught 
to capture and tame them, and the export of elephants 
from Ceylon to India has been going on without inter- 
ruption from the period of the first Punic War. 1 In later 
times all elephants were the property of the Kandyan 
crown ; and their capture or slaughter without the royal 
permission was classed amongst the gravest offences in 
the criminal code. 
In recent years there is reason to believe that their 
numbers have become considerably reduced. They have 
entirely disappeared from localities in which they were 
formerly numerous 2 ; smaller herds have been taken in 
the periodical captures for the government service, and 
hunters returning from the chase report them to be 
growing scarce. In consequence of this diminution the 
peasantry in some parts of the island have even suspended 
the ancient practice of keeping watchers and fires by 
night to drive away the elephants from their growing 
crops. 3 The opening of roads and the clearing of the 
mountain forests of Kandy for the cultivation of coffee, 
another conjecture, that the word $c, torn. ii. ch. lxiii. p. 331.) 
elephant may possibly be traced to 3 In some parts of Bengal, where 
the Singhalese name of the animal, elephants were formerly trouble- 
alia, which means literally, " the some (especially near the wilds of 
huge one." Alia, he adds, is not a Kamgur), the natives got rid of 
derivation from Sanskrit or Pali, them by mixing a preparation of 
but belongs to a dialect more ancient the poisonous Nepal root called 
than either. dakra in balls of grain, and other 
1 JElian, de Nat. Anim. lib. xvi. materials, of which the animal is 
c. 18 ; Cosmas Inbicopl. p. 128. fond. In Cuttack, above fifty 
2 Le Brun, who visited Ceylon years ago, mineral poison was laid 
a. d. 1705, says that in the district for them in the same way, and the 
round Colombo, where elephants carcases of eighty were found which 
are now never seen, they were then had been killed by it, (Asiat. Bes., 
so abundant, that 160 had been xv. 183.) 
taken in a single corral. ( Voyage, 
