agree that the largest specimens are to be found, the tallest of ordinary herds do not average more than eight feet.  WOLF, in his account of the Ceylon elephant[3], says he saw one taken near Jaffna, which measured twelve feet and one inch high.  But the truth is, that the general bulk of the elephant so far exceeds that of the animals which we are accustomed to see daily, that the imagination magnifies its unusual dimensions; and I have seldom or ever met with an inexperienced spectator who did not unconsciously over-estimate the size of an elephant shown to him, whether in captivity or in a state of nature.  Major DENHAM would have guessed some which he saw in Africa to be sixteen feet in height, but the largest when killed was found to measure nine feet six, from the foot to the hip-bone.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Natural History of Animals.  By Sir JOHN HILL, M.D.  London, 1748-52, p. 565.  A probable source of these false estimates is mentioned by a writer in the Indian Sporting Review for Oct. 1857.  “Elephants were measured formerly, and even now, by natives, as to their height, by throwing a rope over them, the ends brought to the ground on each side, and half the length taken as the true height.  Hence the origin of elephants fifteen and sixteen feet high.  A rod held at right angles to the measuring rod, and parallel to the ground, will rarely give more than ten feet, the majority being under nine.”—­P. 159.]

[Footnote 2:  SHAW’S Zoology.  Lond. 1806. vol. i. p. 216; ARMANDI, Hist.  Milit. des Elephans, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2.]

[Footnote 3:  WOLF’S Life and Adventures, &c., p. 164.  Wolf was a native of Mecklenburg, who arrived in Ceylon about 1750, as chaplain in one of the Dutch East Indiamen, and having been taken into the government employment, he served for twenty years at Jaffna, first as Secretary to the Governor, and afterwards in an office the duties of which he describes to be the examination and signature of the “writings which served to commence a suit in any of the Courts of justice.”  His book embodies a truthful and generally accurate account of the northern portion of the island, with which alone he was conversant, and his narrative gives a curious insight into the policy of the Dutch Government, and of the condition of the natives under their dominion.]

[Footnote 4:  DENHAM’S Travels, &c., 4to p. 220.  The fossil remains of the Indian elephant have been discovered at Jabalpur, showing a height of fifteen feet.—­Journ.  Asiat.  Soc.  Beng. vi.  Professor ANSTED in his Ancient World, p. 197, says he was informed by Dr. Falconer “that out of eleven hundred elephants from which the tallest were selected and measured with care, on one occasion in India, there was not one whose height equalled eleven feet.”]