It is by no means an incurious subject to trace the sources of information possessed by our ancestors of subjects of natural history that have now become so familiar as to create a surprise that fables respecting them should so long have been currently received. In regard to the elephant, the earliest notions the people of the Middle Ages had of it must have been from the narratives of pilgrims and other travellers from the East. The first instance, after classic times, of an elephant being brought to the West occurred in the year 807, when one was sent as a present from the famous Caliph Haroum al Raschid to the Emperor Charlemagne, and must have occasioned no small degree of astonishment. Matthew Prior mentions that the Soldan of Babylon, Malek el Kamel, sent an elephant as a choice present to the Emperor Frederic II. in the year 1229, but it was not till 1255 that the first specimen was seen in England: this was a present from the King of France to our Henry III. The chronicler, John of Oxenedes, gives full details of the arrival of this animal in London, and tells us of the enormous crowds that flocked together to behold it. The writ is still existing that was sent to the Sheriff of Kent, dated February 3rd, 1255, directing him to go in person to Dover, together with John Gouch, the king’s servant, to arrange in what manner the king’s present might most conveniently be brought over, and to find for the said John a ship and all things necessary; and if, by the advice of mariners and others, it could be brought by water, directing it to be so conveyed. It was, however, eventually landed at Sandwich, and walked thence to London. Another writ, dated the 26th of the same month, ordered the Sheriffs of London to cause to be built at the Tower a house for it, forty feet in length and twenty in breadth. The elephant itself was ten feet in height and ten years old. It only lived two years. Of this elephant Matthew Prior made a very good representation and his original drawing may still be seen amongst the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum; this he expressly tells us was taken from the life _ipso elephante exemplariter assistente_. An equally good, but smaller, drawing occurs at the close of the chronicle of John de Walingeford, a monk in the Abbey of St. Albans. This also may be seen amongst the Cottonian collection. The historians of the time regarded the new arrival as a perfect prodigy, as they very well might do, when we remember how the British public, comparatively satiated with wild beasts, flocked in hundreds of thousands some few years ago to see the first hippopotamus. They gave long and detailed accounts of the habits of the elephant in a wild state, details which were eagerly read by the great multitude seeking for some information on this strange monster in their midst; these more or less trustworthy facts, though mingled with many obvious absurdities, would seem to show that a fair amount of knowledge