Produced by deaurider, Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE WILD ELEPHANT. LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE [Illustration: AN ELEPHANT CORRAL.] THE WILD ELEPHANT AND _THE METHOD OF CAPTURING AND TAMING IT IN CEYLON_. BY SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT, BART. K.C.S. LL.D. F.R.S. &c. AUTHOR OF “CEYLON, AN ACCOUNT OF THE ISLAND, PHYSICAL, HISTORICAL, AND TOPOGRAPHICAL,” ETC. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1867. _TO_ MY INTELLIGENT COMPANION IN MANY OF THE JOURNEYS THROUGHOUT THE MOUNTAINS AND FORESTS OF CEYLON, IN THE COURSE OF WHICH MUCH OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME WAS COLLECTED; _TO_ MAJOR SKINNER, CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF ROADS AND PUBLIC WORKS, ETC., ETC. ONE OF THE MOST EXPERIENCED AND VALUABLE SERVANTS OF THE CROWN; IT IS INSCRIBED, IN THE HOPE THAT IT MAY RECALL TO HIM THE PLEASANT MEMORIES WHICH IT AWAKES IN ME. PREFACE. In this volume, the chapters descriptive of the structure and habits of the wild elephant are reprinted for the sixth time from a larger work,[1] published originally in 1859. Since the appearance of the First Edition, many corrections and much additional matter have been supplied to me, chiefly from India and Ceylon, and will be found embodied in the following pages. To one of these in particular I feel bound to direct attention. In the course of a more enlarged essay on the zoology of Ceylon,[2] amongst other proofs of a geological origin for that island, distinct from that of the adjacent continent of India, as evidenced by peculiarities in the flora and fauna of each respectively, I had occasion to advert to a discovery which had been recently announced by Temminck in his _Survey of the Dutch possessions in the Indian Archipelago_,[3] that the elephant which abounds in Sumatra (although unknown in the adjacent island of Java), and which had theretofore been regarded as identical in species with the Indian one, has been found to possess peculiarities, in which it differs as much from the elephant of India as the latter does from its African congener. On this new species, to which the natives give the name of “_gadjah_,” TEMMINCK has conferred the scientific designation of the _Elephas Sumatranus_. The points which entitle it to this distinction he enumerates minutely in the work[4] before alluded to, and they have been summarized as follows by Prince Lucien Bonaparte.