[Footnote 1:  AELIAN, lib. ii. cap. ii.]

[Footnote 2:  See SCHLEGEL’S Essay on the Elephant and the Sphynx. Classical Journal, No. lx.  Although the trained elephant nowhere appears upon the monuments of the Egyptians, the animal was not unknown to them, and ivory and elephants are figured on the walls of Thebes and Karnac amongst the spoils of Thothmes III., and the tribute paid to Rameses I. The Island of Elephantine, in the Nile, near Assouan (Syene) is styled in hieroglyphical writing “The Land of the Elephant;” but as it is a mere rock, it probably owes its designation to its form.  See Sir GARDNER WILKINSON’S Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. pl. iv.; vol. v. p. 176.  Above the first cataract of the Nile are two small islands, each bearing the name of Phylae;—­quaere, is the derivation of this word at all connected with the Arabic term fil?  See ante, p. 76, note.  The elephant figured in the sculptures of Nineveh is universally as wild, not domesticated.]

Another favourite doctrine of the earlier visitors to the East seems to me to be equally fallacious; PYRARD, BERNIER, PHILLIPE, THEVENOT, and other travellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, proclaimed the superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, in size, strength, and sagacity, above those of all other parts of India[1]; and TAVERNIER in particular is supposed to have stated that if a Ceylon elephant be introduced amongst those bred in any other place, by an instinct of nature they do him homage by laying their trunks to the ground, and raising them reverentially.  This passage has been so repeatedly quoted in works on Ceylon that it has passed into an aphorism, and is always adduced as a testimony to the surpassing intelligence of the elephants of that island; although a reference to the original shows that Tavernier’s observations are not only fanciful in themselves, but are restricted to the supposed excellence of the Ceylon animal in war.[2] This estimate of the superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, if it ever prevailed in India, was not current there at a very early period; for in the Ramayana, which is probably the oldest epic in the world, the stud of Dasartha, the king of Ayodhya, was supplied with elephants from the Himalaya and the Vindhya Mountains.[3] I have had no opportunity of testing by personal observation the justice of the assumption; but from all that I have heard of the elephants of the continent, and seen of those of Ceylon, I have reason to conclude that the difference, if not imaginary, is exceptional, and must have arisen in particular and individual instances, from more judicious or elaborate instruction.

[Footnote 1:  This is merely a reiteration of the statement of AELIAN, who ascribes to the elephants of Taprobane a vast superiority in size, strength, and intelligence, above, those of continental India,—­[Greek:  “Kai oide ge naesiotai elephantes ton haepiroton halkimoteroi te taen rhomaen kai meixous idein eisi, kai thumosophoteroi de panta pantae krinointo han."]—­AELIAN, De Nat.  Anim., lib.  Xvi.  Cap. xviii.