FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
95 
Vast multitudes of devotees, and others of all ranks and castes, 
and of both sexes, assemble there from the most remote parts of India 
and the surrounding countries, all the wealthiest classes bringing 
Elephants with them.* On that occasion I endeavoured, through 
the native officers connected with the administration of the Eair, to 
ascertain the number of Elephants then crowded within a small area, 
and the return made was about eleven hundred, derived from all parts 
of India,, the majority of which passed under my eye. I have seen 
the Elephants of Pegu and Siam in the forests of the Tenasseriin 
Provinces, and the Ceylon Elephant in its native island. The only 
geographical forms of the Asiatic species which I have not examined 
alive, are those of Cochin-China, Borneo, and Sumatra. The result 
of this range of observation, combined with long osteological study, 
has been to establish the conviction in my mind, that there is but a 
single species of Asiatic Elephant, at present known, modified, 
doubtless, according to his more northern or southern habitat, but 
not to an extent exceeding that of a slight geographical variety. 
It is the more necessary that the subject should be thoroughly 
investigated, since upon the hasty assumption that the Elephant of 
Ceylon and Sumatra belong to a distinct species, a speculation has 
been put forward, which seeks to explain it, by means of a former 
direct continuity of land, between the two islands.f But the infer¬ 
ences of physical geography and of geology are alike opposed to the 
conjecture. The range of low hills which forms the spine of the 
Malay Peninsula, and which is separated by a narrow interval only, 
from the Islands of the Archipelago, can be traced north, increasing 
in height and development till it joins on with the ITimalayah. While 
Ceylon, as has often been remarked, presents all the physical charac¬ 
ters of being a severed portion of the distinct mountain-system of 
the Western Ghats. With certain exceptions, the Mammalian fauna, 
as a general rule, confirms this view, as do, also, recent investigations 
on the Flora of the mountainous regions of the adjoining Indian 
Peninsula, near its extremity. That a connexion formerly, and at 
no very remote epoch, existed between the Malay Archipelago and 
the contiguous main land, is clearly indicated by the species of the 
* General Hardwick, who was present at the ‘ Koom’ Fair of 1796, estimates 
the number of human beings then assembled, to have exceeded two and a half 
millions ! doubtless an exaggeration. Five hundred devotees of one sect were killed in 
an affray by the Seiks. I do not vouch for the accuracy of the number of Elephants, 
reported to me, on the occasion above referred to; but I believe it to have been under 
the truth, rather than above it. I mention this, the more especially, as probably no 
such assemblage of Elephants will ever again be seen at Hurdwar. The facilities of 
railway travelling will relieve the Princes of Southern India, such as Travancore and 
Tanjore, &c., from the necessity of taking a cortege of Elephants with them, when 
they attend the Koom Fair in future. (Hardwick, Op. cit. Yol. vi. p. 312.) During 
the ‘Koom’ of 1760, eighteen thousand Bairagis (Fakirs of one sect) are said to 
have been slaughtered by the Gosains, another sect. Op. cit. Yol. xi. p. 455. 
f Tennent. ‘ Nat. History of Ceylon/ 1861, pp. 61-67. 
