[Footnote 1:  This was the largest elephant that had been tamed in Ceylon; he measured upwards of nine feet at the shoulders and belonged to the caste so highly prized for the temples.  He was gentle after his first capture, but his removal from the corral to the stables, though only a distance of six miles, was a matter of the extremest difficulty; his extraordinary strength rendering him more than a match for the attendant decoys.  He, on one occasion, escaped, but was recaptured in the forest; and he afterwards became so docile as to perform a variety of tricks.  He was at length ordered to be removed to Colombo; but such was his terror on approaching the gate, that on coaxing him to enter the gate, he became paralysed in the extraordinary way elsewhere alluded to, and died on the spot.]

The males are generally more unmaneagable than the females, and in both an inclination to lie down to rest is regarded as a favourable symptom of approaching tractability, some of the most resolute having been known to stand for months together, even during sleep.  Those which are the most obstinate and violent at first are the soonest and most effectually subdued, and generally prove permanently docile and submissive.  But those which are sullen or morose, although they may provoke no chastisement by their viciousness, are always slower in being taught, and are rarely to be trusted in after life.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The natives profess that the high caste elephants, such as are allotted to the temples, are of all others the most difficult to tame, and M. BLES, the Dutch correspondent of BUFFON, mentions a caste of elephants which he had heard of, as being peculiar to the Kandyan kingdom, that were not higher than a heifer (genisse), covered with hair, and insusceptible of being tamed. (BUFFON, Supp. vol. vi. p. 29.) Bishop HEBER, in the account of his journey from Bareilly towards the Himalayas, describes the Raja Gourman Sing, “mounted on a little female elephant, hardly bigger than a Durham ox, and almost as shaggy as a poodle.”—­Journx., ch. xvii.  It will be remembered that the mammoth discovered in 1803 embedded in icy soil in Siberia, was covered with a coat of long hair, with a sort of wool at the roots.  Hence there arose the question whether that northern region had been formerly inhabited by a race of elephants, so fortified by nature against cold; or whether the individual discovered had been borne thither by currents from some more temperate latitudes.  To the latter theory the presence of hair seemed a fatal objection; but so far as my own observation goes, I believe the elephants are more or less provided with hair.  In some it is more developed than in others, and it is particularly observable in the young, which when captured are frequently covered with a woolly fleece, especially about the head and shoulders.  In the older individuals in Ceylon, this is less apparent:  and in captivity the hair appears to be altogether removed by the custom of the mahouts to rub their skin daily with oil and a rough lump of burned clay.  See a paper on the subject, Asiat.  Journ. N.S. vol. xiv. p. 182, by Mr. G. FAIRHOLME.]