Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Mammalia).djvu/502

464 skeleton, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, measures 11 feet 3 in., so the animal when living, if the skeleton is correctly mounted, must have been nearly 12 feet high. Kelaart records having seen a Ceylon elephant of the same dimensions. A male 9 ft. 7 in. high measured 26 ft. 2½ in. from tip of trunk to end of tail. Weight of a male 8 feet high, 57 cwt.; of a, female 7 ft. 6 in. high, 51 cwt. (P. Z. S. 1881, p. 450). The last two animals were not full-grown. Tusks vary greatly, the longest recorded I believe (Sir V. Brooke's, from Mysore) measured 8 ft. and weighed 90 lbs., but a shorter tusk from Gorakhpur is said to have weighed 100 lbs. Both were from elephants with but one tusk perfect. Two pairs from the Garo hills are said to have weighed 157 and 155 lbs. respectively ('Asian,' October 16th, 1888, p. 35).

Distribution. The forest-clad portions of India, Ceylon, Assam, Burma, Siam, Cochin China, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, aud Borneo, perhaps introduced in the last named. In India elephants are still found wild along the base of the Himalayas as far west as Dehra Dún; also in places in the great forest country between the Ganges and Kistna as far west as Biláspur and Mandla, in the Western Ghats as far north as 17° or 18°, and in some of the forest-clad ranges in Mysore and farther south. They do not appear to ascend the Himalayas to any elevation, but are sometimes found at considerable heights above the sea in Southern India, and in Ceylon they wander at times near Newera Ellia to over 7000 feet. Formerly the range of the elephant in India was greater; it was found wild about 1600 in Malvva and Nimar (Ain-i-Akbari, Gladwin's translation, ii, pp. 45 & 63), and at a much more recent date in Chánda, Central Provinces.

Habits. The following summary is chiefly taken from the admirable description by Sanderson in 'Thirteen years among the Wild Beasts of India,' chapters vi, viii, &c. Sir Emerson Temment's account of the Ceylon elephants, though often quoted, is not, like Sanderson's, the result of personal observation, and is less accurate.

The country chiefly inhabited by elephants is tree-forest, undulating or hilly, generally containing bamboos in considerable quantities, but the animals often enter the high grass growing on alluvial flats. Individuals of various sizes and ages, andof both sexes, associate in herds, usually numbering 30 to 50, but not uncommonly more, sometimes 100. These herds often break up temporarily into smaller groups. The males are frequently found alone, but as a rule each belongs to a herd and joins it occasionally.