60 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. I. 



India, is found in droves in all parts of the island where 

 vegetation and water are abundant. 



The elephant, the lord paramount of the Ceylon 

 forests, is to be met with in every district, on the 

 confines of the woods, in the depths of which he finds 

 concealment and shade during the hours when the 

 sun is high, and from which he emerges only at twi- 

 light to wend his way towards the rivers and tanks, 

 where he luxuriates till dawn, when he again seeks the 

 retirement of the deep forests. This noble animal fills 

 so dignified a place both in the zoology and oeconomy of 

 Ceylon, and his habits in a state of nature have been so 

 much misunderstood, that I shall devote a separate 

 section to his defence from misrepresentation, and to an 

 exposition of what, from observation and experience, 

 I believe to be his genuine character when free in 

 his native domains. But this seems the proper place 

 to allude to a recent discovery in connexion with 

 the elephant, which strikingly confirms a conjecture 

 which I ventured to make elsewhere l 9 relative to the 

 isolation of Ceylon, and its distinctness, in many re- 

 markable particulars, from the great continent of India. 

 Every writer who previously treated of the island, includ- 

 ing the accomplished Dr. Davy and the erudite Lassen, 

 was contented, by a glance at its outline and a reference 

 to its position on the map, to assume that Ceylon was a 

 fragment, which in a very remote age had been torn from 

 the adjacent mainland, by some convulsion of nature. 

 Hence it was taken for granted that the vegetation 

 which covers and the races of animals which inhabit it, 

 must be identical with those of Hindustan ; to which 



1 Ceylon, $c, by Sir J. Emerson Tennent, vol. i. pp. 7, 13, 85, 160, 

 183, n., 205, 270, &c. 



