[Footnote 1:  Menageries, &c.  “The elephant,” ch. i.  Sir CHARLES BELL, in his essay on The Hand and its Mechanism, which forms one of the “Bridgewater Treatises,” has exhibited the reasons deducible from organisation, which show the incapacity of the elephant to spring or leap like the horse and other animals whose structure is designed to facilitate agility and speed.  In them the various bones of the shoulder and fore limbs, especially the clavicle and humerus, are set at such an angle, that the shock in descending is modified, and the joints and sockets protected from the injury occasioned by concussion.  But in the elephant, where the weight of the body is immense, the bones of the leg, in order to present solidify and strength to sustain it, are built in one firm and perpendicular column; instead of being placed somewhat obliquely at their points of contact.  Thus whilst the force of the weight in descending is broken and distributed by this arrangement in the case of the horse; it would be so concentrated in the elephant as to endanger every joint from the toe to the shoulder.]

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It is to the structure of the knee-joint that the elephant is indebted for his singular facility in ascending and descending steep activities, climbing rocks and traversing precipitous ledges, where even a mule dare not venture; and this again leads to the correction of another generally received error, that his legs are “formed more for strength than flexibility, and fitted to bear an enormous weight upon a level surface, without the necessity of ascending or descending great acclivities."[1] The same authority assumes that, although the elephant is found in the neighbourhood of mountainous ranges, and will even ascend rocky passes, such a service is a violation of its natural habits.

[Footnote 1:  Menageries, &c., “The Elephant,” ch. ii.]

Of the elephant of Africa I am not qualified to speak, nor of the nature of the ground which it most frequents; but certainly the facts in connection with the elephant of India are all irreconcilable with the theory mentioned above.  In Bengal, in the Nilgherries, in Nepal, in Burmah, in Siam, Sumatra, and Ceylon, the districts in which the elephants most abound, are all hilly and mountainous.  In the latter, especially, there is not a range so elevated as to be inaccessible to them.  On the very summit of Adam’s Peak, at an altitude of 7,420 feet, and on a pinnacle which the pilgrims climb with difficulty, by means of steps hewn in the rock, Major Skinner, in 1840, found the spoor of an elephant.