Chap. III.] THE ELEPHANT. 97 



from being regarded as an indication of " 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- 

 fied 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 Mac ready, 

 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, Be Anim., lib. iv. with drawings illustrative of the 



c. 9. " bixolov crdATriyyi." 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 Archceolo- 



fifteenth century, is interspersed gical Album, p. 176. 



H 



