Chap. VII. ] 



THE ELEPHANT. 



235 



not apply to the grinders or to the tusks ; besides which, 

 the inference is at variance with the fact, that not only 

 the horns and teeth, but entire skeletons of deer, are 

 frequently found in the districts inhabited by the ele- 

 phant. 



The natives, to account for this popular belief, declare 

 that the survivors of the herd bury such of their com- 

 panions as die a natural death. 1 It is curious that this 

 belief was current also amongst the Greeks of the Lower 

 Empire ; and Phile, writing early in the fourteenth 

 century, not only describes the younger elephants as 

 tending the wounded, but as burying the dead : 



(if, Orav 8' EirLcrrf] rr}9 tsXsvtt}? 6 %p6vo9 

 Kolvov tsXovs afjivvav 6 %£vos (jjspsi" 2 



The Singhalese have a further superstition in relation 

 to the close of life in the elephant : they believe that, on 

 feeling the approach of dissolution, he repairs to a solitary 

 valley, and there resigns himself to death. A native 

 who accompanied Mr. Cripps, when hunting, in the 

 forests of Anarajapoora, intimated to him that he was 

 then in the immediate vicinity of the spot " to which 

 the elephants come to die" but that it was so mysteriously 

 concealed, that although every one believed in its exist- 



1 A corral was organised near was complete. The wild elephants 



Putlam in 1846, by Mr. Morris, resumed their path through it, and 



the chief officer of the district. It a few days afterwards the headman 



was constructed across one of the reported to Mr. Morris that the 



paths which the elephants frequent bodies had been removed and 



in their frequent marches, and carried outside the corral to a spot 



during the course of the proceedings to which nothing but the elephants 



two of the captured elephants died, could have borne them. 



Their carcases were left of course 2 Phile, Expositio de Eleph. 1. 



within the enclosure, which was 243. 

 abandoned as soon as the capture 



