Chap. HI.] 
THE ELEPHANT. 
97 
from being regarded as an indication of <e pleasure/' is 
the well-known cry of rage with which he rushes to en- 
counter an assailant. Akistotle describes it as resem- 
bling the hoarse sound of a " trumpet." 1 The French 
still designate the proboscis of an elephant by the same 
expression "trompe," (which we have unmeaningly 
corrupted into trunk,) and hence the scream of the 
elephant is known as " trumpeting " by the hunters in 
Ceylon. Their cry when in pain, or when subjected to 
compulsion, is a grunt or a deep groan from the throat, 
with the proboscis curled upwards and the lips wide apart. 
Should the attention of an individual in the herd be 
attracted by any unusual appearance in the forest, the 
intelligence is rapidly communicated by a low suppressed 
sound made by the lips, somewhat resembling the twit- 
tering of a bird, and described by the hunters by the 
word "prut." 
A very remarkable noise has been described to me 
by more than one individual, who has come unex- 
pectedly upon a herd during the night, when the alarm 
of the elephants was apparently too great to be satis- 
tied with the stealthy note of warning just described. 
On these occasions the sound produced resembled the 
hollow booming of an empty tun when struck with a 
wooden mallet or a muffled sledge. Major Macready, 
Military Secretary in Ceylon in 1836, who heard it by 
night amongst the wild elephants in the great forest of 
Bintenne, describes it as " a sort of banging noise like a 
1 Aristotle, De Anim., lib. iv. with drawings illustrative of the 
c. 9. " b/xoiov adXTTiyyi" See also strange animals of the East. 
Pliny, lib. x. ch. cxiii. A manu- Amongst them are two elephants, 
script in the British Museum, con- whose trunks are literally in the 
taining the romance of "Alex- form of trumpets with expanded 
ander," which is probably of the mouths. See Weight's Archceola- 
fifteenth century, is interspersed gical Album, p. 176. 
H 
