Elephant. One of these, which, according to Cuvier, belongs to the variety called Dauntelah by Corse, was sent to the Musaom at Leyden, in 1815, six years before the appearance of the second edition of the "Ossemens Fossiles," (see that ed. p. 66), where it exists at the present day. This skeleton agrees in all particulars with the Elephant of Bengal, having only nineteen dorsal vertebræ and the like number of ribs. The description which Cuvier gives of his Elephas indicus seems, therefore, to have been based exclusively upon his two other skeletons. Both of these, as he himself informs us, were from Ceylon. He tells us this, in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, (1806, p. 148), speaking of the male which he identifies with the variety, Mooknah of Corse; and he says the same (Oss. Foss. p. 67) of the female, which he considers as belonging to the variety Komarea of Corse, adding that these were the skeletons of two Elephants brought from Ceylon to the Netherlands in 1786, and afterwards taken from thence to Paris.[1]
Hence it appears vey clear that Cuvier described his Elephas indicus from specimens of two different species, one of which agrees with the Elephant of Bengal, whilst the others have all the characters of the Elephant of Sumatra. Since, therefore, both the latter skeletons attributed by Cuvier to Ceylon, presented the characters of the Elephant of Sumatra, it appeared to me to be probable that the Ceylonese Elephant belonged to the Sumatran species, and not to that of Bengal—the so-called Elephas indicus. This conjecture has been now wholly unexpectedly confirmed through a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, in a manner which leaves no further doubt on the subject. The celebrated traveller Diard, advanced in years, but still endued with that untiring zeal and youthful activity by which science and our National Museum have profited so largely, during his long service under the government of the Netherlands, passed three months in Ceylon, in 1888, on a journey undertaken with the object of investigating the system of cultivation, and employed his leisure time in collecting the animals of the island. During some Elephant-shooting expeditions, he obtained a male and female Elephant from seven to eight feet high, and besides these two young specimens, which he placed entire in casks filled with arrack. The
- ↑ In the Paris Museum at the present moment, as I learn by a friendly communication of Dr. Pucheran, there are, besides the skeletons of the two Ceylonese Elephants, brought from Holland to Paris in 1795, and examined by Cuvier, a third sent by Duvancel from Bengal M. Pacheran confirms the fact, that both the Ceylonese elephant-skeletons hare twenty dorsal vertebræ and twenty pairs of ribs. He finds, however, the same number in the skeleton from Bengal. from this one might be led to suppose, that the Ceylonese Elephant is also found in Bengal. But I think it would be rash to consider this fact established by a single observation, as an the skeletons of Bengalese Elephants which I hare examined have had, without exception, only nineteen dorsal vertebræ and nineteen ribs. It is more likely that Duvaucel's skeleton was taken from a Ceylonese Elephant; examples of this sort being, as we shall afterwards show on the authority of Heer Diard, often brought living to Bengal.
