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. y 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 Indicopl. 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. y 

 so abundant, that 160 had been xv. 183.) 



taken in a single corral. ( Voyage, 



