[28] See _Notes on the Natural History of Ceylon_ by Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT, p. 60. Sir S. BAKER adds as a distinctive feature of the African elephant that its “back is concave while that of the Indian variety is convex.” (_The Albert Nyanza_, vol. 1. p. 274.) [29] A native of rank informed me, that “the tail of a high-caste elephant will sometimes touch the ground, but such are very rare.” [30] This is confirmed by the fact that the scar of the ancle wound, occasioned by the rope on the legs of those which have been captured by noosing, presents precisely the same tint when thoroughly healed. [31] _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxviii. p. 254, A.D. 433. [32] PALLEGOIX, _Siam_, _etc._ vol. i. p. 152. [33] _Mahawanso_, ch. xviii. p. 111. The Hindu sovereigns of Orissa, in the middle ages, bore the style of _Gajapati_, “powerful in elephants.” (_Asiat. Res._ xv. 253.) [34] Herod. l. i. c. 189. [35] Ibid. l. ii. c. 38. [36] ARMANDI, _Hist. Milit. des Eléphants_, lib. ii. c. x. p. 380. HORACE mentions a white elephant as having been exhibited at Rome: “Sive elephas albus vulgi converteret ora.” (HOR. _Ep._ ii. 196.) [37] After writing the above, I was permitted by the late Dr. HARRISON, of Dublin, to see some accurate drawings of the brain of an elephant, which he had the opportunity of dissecting in 1847; and on looking to that of the base, I have found a remarkable verification of the information which I had previously collected in Ceylon. The small figure A is the ganglion of the fifth nerve, showing the small motor and large sensitive portion. [Illustration] The _olfactory lobes_, from which the olfactory nerves proceed, are large, whilst the _optic and muscular nerves of the orbit are singularly small_ for so vast an animal; and one is immediately struck by the prodigious size of the fifth nerve, which supplies the proboscis with its exquisite sensibility, as well as by the great size of the motor portion of the seventh, which supplies the same organ with its power of movement and action. [38] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” p. 27. [39] Major ROGERS. An account of this singular adventure will be found in the _Ceylon Miscellany_ for 1842, vol. i. p. 221. [40] _Menageries_, _etc._ “The Elephant,” ch. iii. p. 68. [41] ARISTOTLE, _De Anim._ lib. iv. c. 9, ὁμοῖον σάλπιγγι. See also PLINY, lib. x. ch. cxiii. A manuscript of the 15th century in the British Museum, containing the romance of “_Alexander_,” which is probably of the fifteenth century, is interspersed with drawings illustrative of the strange animals of the East. Amongst them are two elephants, whose trunks are literally in the form of _trumpets with expanded mouths_. See WRIGHT’S _Archæological Album_, p. 176, and M.S. Reg. 15, e. vi. Brit. Mus. [Illustration]