FOOTNOTES:
1 Ceylon: An Account of the Island, Physical, Historical, and Topographical. 2 vols. 8vo. London, Longmans & Co. 1859
2 Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon. London, 1861. See also Ceylon, etc. by Sir J. Emerson Tennent. London, 1860, vol. 1. pp. 7, 13, 85, 160, 183, &c.
3 Coup d’Œil général sur les Possessions Néerlandaises dans l’Inde Archipélagique.
4 Temminck, Coup d’Œil, etc. t. i. c. iv. p. 328; t. ii. c. iii. p. 91.
5 Proceed. Zool. Soc. London, 1849, P. 144 note. The original description of Temminck is as follows:
“Elephas Sumatranus, Nob. ressemble, par la forme générale du crâne, à l’éléphant du continent de l’Asie; mais la partie libre des intermaxillaires est beaucoup plus courte et plus étroite; les cavités nasales sont beaucoup moins larges; l’espace entre les orbites des yeux est plus étroit; la partie postérieure du crâne au contraire est plus large que dans l’espèce du continent.
“Les mâchelières se rapprochent, par la forme de leur couronne, plutôt de l’espèce asiatique que de celle qui est propre à l’Afrique; c’est-à-dire que leur couronne offre la forme de rubans ondoyés et non pas en losange; mais ces rubans sont de la largeur de ceux qu’on voit à la couronne des dents de l’éléphant d’Afrique; ils sont conséquemment moins nombreux que dans celui du continent de l’Asie. Les dimensions de ces rubans, dans la direction d’avant en arrière, comparées à celles prises dans la direction transversale et latérale, sont en raison de 3 ou 4 à 1; tandis que dans l’éléphant du continent elles sont comme 4 ou 6 à 1. La longueur totale de six de ces rubans, dans l’espèce nouvelle de Sumatra, ainsi que dans celle d’Afrique, est d’environ 12 centimètres, tandis que cette longueur n’est que de 8 à 10 centimètres dans l’espèce du continent de l’Asie.
“Les autres formes ostéologiques sont à peu près les mêmes dans les trois espèces; mais il y a différence dans le nombre des os dont le squelette se compose, ainsi que le tableau comparatif ci-joint l’éprouve.
“L’elephas Africanus a 7 vertèbres du cou, 21 vert. dorsales, 3 lombaires, 4 sacrées et 26 caudales; 21 paires de côtes, dont 6 vraies et 15 fausses. L’elephas Indicus a 7 vertèbres du cou, 19 dorsales, 3 lombaires, 5 sacrées et 34 caudales, 19 paires de côtes, dont 6 vraies et 3 fausses. L’elephas Sumatranus a 7 vertèbres du cou, 20 dorsales, 3 lombaires, 4 sacrées et 34 caudales; 20 paires de côtes, dont 6 vraies et 14 fausses.
“Ces caractères ont été constatés sur trois squelettes de l’espèce nouvelle, un mâle et une femelle adultes et un jeune mâle. Nous n’avons pas encore été à même de nous procurer la dépouille de cette espèce.”
6 The Natural History Review, January 1863, pp. 81, 96.
7 M. Ad. Pictet has availed himself of the love of the elephant for water, to found on it a solution of the long-contested question as to the etymology of the word “elephant,”—a term which, whilst it has passed into almost every dialect of the West, is scarcely to be traced in any language of Asia. The Greek ἐλέφας, to which we are immediately indebted for it, did not originally mean the animal, but, as early as the time of Homer, was applied only to its tusks, and signified ivory. Bochart has sought for a Semitic origin, and seizing on the Arabic fil, and prefixing the article al, suggests alfil, akin to ἐλεφ; but rejecting this, Bochart himself resorts to the Hebrew eleph, an “ox”—and this conjecture derives a certain degree of countenance from the fact that the Romans, when they obtained their first sight of the elephant in the army of Pyrrhus, in Lucania, called it the Luca bos. But the αντος is still unaccounted for: and Pott has sought to remove the difficulty by introducing the Arabic hindi, Indian, thus making eleph hindi, “bos Indicus.” The conversion of hindi into αντος is an obstacle, but here the example of “tamarind” comes to aid; tamar hindi, the “Indian date,” which in mediæval Greek forms ταμἄρεντι. A theory of Benary, that ἐλέφας might be compounded of the Arabic al, and ibha, a Sanskrit name for the elephant, is exposed to still greater etymological exception. Pictet’s solution is, that in the Sanskrit epics “the King of Elephants,” who has the distinction of carrying the god Indra, is called airavata or airavana, a modification of airavanta “son of the ocean,” which again comes from iravat, “abounding in water.” “Nous aurions donc ainsi, comme corrélatif du grec ἐλέφαντα, une ancienne forme, âirâvanta ou âilâvanta, affaiblie plus tard en âirâvata ou âirâvana.... On connaît la prédilection de l’éléphant pour le voisinage des fleuves, et son amour pour l’eau, dont l’abondance est nécessaire à son bien-être.” This Sanskrit name, Pictet supposes, may have been carried to the West by the Phœnicians, who were the purveyors of ivory from India; and, from the Greek, the Latins derived elephas, which passed into the modern languages of Italy, Germany, and France. But it is curious that the Spaniards acquired from the Moors their Arabic term for ivory, marfil, and the Portuguese marfim; and that the Scandinavians, probably from their early expeditions to the Mediterranean, adopted fill as their name for the elephant itself, and fil-bein for ivory; in Danish, fils-ben. (See Journ. Asiat. 1843, t. xliii. p. 133.) The Spaniards of South America call the palm which produces the vegetable ivory (Phytelephas macrocarpa) Palma de marfil, and the nut itself, marfil vegetal.
Since the above was written Gooneratné Modliar, the Singhalese Interpreter to the Supreme Court at Colombo, has supplied me with another conjecture, that the word elephant may possibly be traced to the Singhalese name of the animal, alia, which means literally, “the huge one.” Alia, he adds, is not a derivation from Sanskrit or Pali, but belongs to a dialect more ancient than either.
8 Ælian, de Nat. Anim. lib. xvi. c. 18; Cosmas Indicopl. p. 128.
9 Le Brun, who visited Ceylon A. D. 1705, says that in the district round Colombo, where elephants are now never seen, they were then so abundant, that 160 had been taken in a single corral. (Voyage, etc. tom. ii. ch. lxiii. p. 331.)
10 In some parts of Bengal, where elephants were formerly troublesome (especially near the wilds of Ramgur), the natives got rid of them by mixing a preparation of the poisonous Nepal root called dakra in balls of grain, and other materials, of which the animal is fond. In Cuttack, above fifty years ago, mineral poison was laid for them in the same way, and the carcases of eighty were found which had been killed thus. (Asiat. Res. xv. 183.)
11 The number of elephants has been similarly reduced throughout the south of India, and as in the advancing course of enclosure and cultivation, the area within which they will be driven must become more and more contracted, the conjecture is by no means problematical, that before many generations shall have passed away, the species may become extinct in Asia.
12 The annual importation of ivory into Great Britain alone, for the last few years, has been about one million pounds; which, taking the average weight of a tusk at sixty pounds, would require the slaughter of 8,333 male elephants.
But of this quantity the importation from Ceylon has generally averaged only five or six hundred weight; which, making allowance for the lightness of the tusks, would not involve the destruction of more than seven or eight in each year. At the same time, this does not fairly represent the annual number of tuskers shot in Ceylon, not only because a portion of the ivory finds its way to China and to other places, but because the chiefs and Buddhist priests have a passion for collecting tusks, and the finest and largest are to be found ornamenting their temples and private dwellings. The Chinese profess that for their exquisite carvings the ivory of Ceylon excels all other, both in density of texture and in delicacy of tint; but in the European market, the ivory of Africa, from its more distinct graining, and other causes, obtains a higher price.
13 A writer in the Indian Sporting Review for October 1857 says, “In Malabar a tuskless male elephant is rare; I have seen but two.” (P. 157.)
14 The old fallacy is still renewed that the elephant sheds his tusks. Ælian says he drops them once in ten years (lib. xiv. c. 5); and Pliny repeats the story, adding that, when dropped, the elephants hide them under ground (lib. viii.), whence Shaw says, in his Zoology, “they are frequently found in the woods,” and exported from Africa (vol. i. p. 213); and Sir W. Jardine in the Naturalist’s Library (vol. ix. p. 110), says, “the tusks are shed about the twelfth or thirteenth year.” This is erroneous: after losing the first pair, or, as they are called, the “milk tusks,” which drop in consequence of the absorption of their roots, when the animal is extremely young, the second pair acquire their full size, and become the “permanent tusks,” which are never shed.
15 I have no means of ascertaining the dimensions of the largest tusks supposed to have been obtained in continental India. Of those that I have myself seen the greatest was taken from an elephant killed by Sir Victor Brooke Bart. at the Hassanoor Hills, in Coimbatore in 1863. It measured 8 feet in length, and when placed on end two men each 6 feet high can with ease stand side by side under the curved extremity. It is 1 ft. 6 in. in circumference at the base and weighs 110 lbs. This remarkable tusk is now in the museum at Colebrooke Park in the county Fermanagh. Its companion, owing to disease, is a distorted lump of ivory; an almost shapeless mass weighing 60 lbs. The life-long agony endured by the poor animal who bore it must have been frightful in the extreme. Notwithstanding the inferiority in weight of the Ceylon tusks, as compared with those of the elephant of India, it would, I think, be precipitate to draw the inference that the size of the former was uniformly and naturally less than that of the latter. The truth I believe to be, that if permitted to grow to maturity, the tusks of the one would, in all probability, equal those of the other; but, so eager is the search for ivory in Ceylon, that a tusker, when once observed in a herd, is followed up with such vigilant impatience, that he is almost invariably shot before attaining his full growth. General De Lima, when returning from the governorship of the Portuguese settlements at Mozambique, told me, in 1848, that he had been requested to procure two tusks of the largest size, and straightest possible shape, which were to be formed into a cross to surmount the high altar of the cathedral at Goa: he succeeded in his commission, and sent two, one of which was 180 pounds’ and the other 170 pounds’ weight, with the slightest possible curve. In a periodical entitled The Friend, published in Ceylon, it is stated in the volume for 1837 that the officers belonging to the ships Quorrah and Alburhak, engaged in the Niger Expedition, were shown by a native king two tusks, each two feet and a half in circumference at the base, eight feet long, and weighing upwards of 200 pounds. (Vol. i. p. 225.) Broderip, in his Zoological Recreations, p. 255, says a tusk of 350 pounds’ weight was sold at Amsterdam, but he does not quote his authority. Petherick in his Account of Egypt, Soudan, &c. says that in Central Africa the size of tusks differs in different latitudes, those towards the north being shorter, thicker, less hollow, and heavier than those of the south. Thus a tusk from the Nouaer, Dinka, or Shilook tribes will weigh 120 lbs., while one from Bari would weigh only 70 lbs. or 80 lbs. “Indeed,” he adds, “I have known a tusk from Nouaer to weigh 185 lbs., its length being seven feet two inches, and its greatest thickness at the base nine inches.” (Petherick, p. 418.) Sir S. Baker, in his explorations of the White Nile, saw monster tusks of 160 lbs.; and one in the possession of a trader weighed 172 lbs. (The Albert Nyanza, vol. i. p. 273.)
16 Menageries, etc. published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, vol. i. p. 68: “The Elephant,” ch. iii. It will be seen that I have quoted repeatedly from this volume, because it is the most compendious and careful compilation with which I am acquainted of the information previously existing regarding the elephant. The author incorporates no speculations of his own, but has most diligently and agreeably arranged all the facts collected by his predecessors. The story of antipathy between the elephant and rhinoceros is probably borrowed from Ælian de Nat. lib. xvii. c. 44.
17 “The Correspondencia of Madrid gives the following account of a fight between a Ceylon elephant and two bulls, which took place at Saragossa:—‘The elephant was walking quietly about the arena when the first bull was released and rushed at it with all his might. The elephant received his antagonist with great coolness, and threw him down with the utmost ease. The bull rose again and made two more attacks, which the elephant resented by killing him with his tusks. The conqueror did not seem in the least excited, but quietly drank some water offered by his keeper, and ate several ears of Indian corn. A second bull was then released, and in a few minutes suffered the same fate as the first.’” (Globe, Nov. 9, 1864.) The Times says the elephant killed it “with a thrust of his tusks.”
18 Menageries, etc.: “The Elephant,” ch. iii. In the Anglo-Saxon Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, which has been printed by Cockayne in his Narratiunculæ Anglice conscriptæ, the belief in the alleged antipathy of the elephant to swine is embodied in the text and is thus rendered in the Latin version: “Pervenimus demum ad silvas Indorum ultimas; ubi cum castra collocavissemus, ceperamus velle epulari sub nocte hora xi; cum subito pabulatores lignatoresque exanimes nunciabant, ut celeriter arma caperemus, venire e silvis elephantorum immensas greges ad expugnanda castra. Imperavi ergo Thessalicis equitibus ut ascenderent equos, secumque tollerent sues, quorum grunnitus timere bestias noveram, et occurrere quam primum elephantis jussi ... nec mora trepidantes elephanti conversi sunt. Quieta nox fuit usque ad lucem.” (P. 58.) Another allusion to the same legendary incident will be found in the Lyfe of Alisaunder, one of the most ancient English romances, reprinted by Weber in his Metrical Romances of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries.
19 This peculiarity was noticed by the ancients, and is recorded by Herodotus: κάμηλον ἵππος φοβέεται, καὶ οὐκ ἀνέχεται οὔτε τὴν ἰδέην αὐτῆς ὁρέων οὔτε τὴν ὀδμὴν ὀσφραινόμενος. (Herod. i. 80.) Camels have long been bred by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, at his establishment near Pisa, and even there the same instinctive dislike to them is manifested by the horse, which it is necessary to train and accustom to their presence in order to avoid accidents. Mr. Broderip mentions, that, “when the precaution of such training has not been adopted, the sudden and dangerous terror with which a horse is seized in coming unexpectedly upon one of them is excessive.”—Note-book of a Naturalist, ch. iv. p. 113.
20 Major Rogers was many years the chief civil officer of the Ceylon Government in the district of Ouvah, where he was killed by lightning, 1845.
21 “Quidam etiam cum equis silvestribus pugnant. Sæpe unus elephas cum sex equis committitur; atque ipse adeo interfui cum unus elephas duos equos cum primo impetu protinus prosternerit;—injecta enim jugulis ipsorum longa proboscide, ad se protractos, dentibus porro comminuit ac protrivit.” (Angli cujusdam in Cambayam navigatio. De Bry, Coll. etc. vol. iii. ch. xvi. p. 31.)
22 To account for the impatience manifested by the elephant at the presence of a dog, it has been suggested that he is alarmed lest the latter should attack his feet, a portion of his body of which the elephant is peculiarly careful. A tame elephant has been observed to regard with indifference a spear directed towards his head, but to shrink timidly from the same weapon when pointed at his feet.
23 A writer in the Indian Sporting Review for October 1857 says a male elephant was killed by two others close to his camp: “the head was completely smashed in; there was a large hole in the side, and the abdomen was ripped open. The latter wound was given probably after it had fallen.” (P. 175.)
24 In the Third Book of Maccabees, which is not printed in our Apocrypha, but appears in the series in the Greek Septuagint, the author, in describing the persecution of the Jews by Ptolemy Philopater, B.C. 210, states that the king swore vehemently that he would send them into the other world, “foully trampled to death by the knees and feet of elephants” (πέμψειν εἰς ᾅδην ἐν γόνασι καὶ ποσὶ θηρίων ᾑκισμένους. 3 Mac. v. 42). Ælian makes the remark, that elephants on such occasions use their knees as well as their feet to crush their victim. (Hist. Anim. viii. 10.)
25 The Hastisilpe, a Singhalese work which treats of the “Science of Elephants,” enumerates amongst those which it is not desirable to possess, “the elephant which will fight with a stone or a stick in his trunk.”
26 Among other eccentric forms, an elephant was seen in 1844, in the district of Bintenne, near Friar’s-Hood Mountain, one of whose tusks was so bent that it took what sailors term a “round turn,” and then resumed its curved direction as before. In the Museum of the College of Surgeons, London, there is a specimen, No 2757, of a spiral tusk.
27 Since the foregoing remarks were written relative to the undefined use of tusks to the elephant, I have seen a speculation on the same subject in Dr. Holland’s “Constitution of the Animal Creation, as expressed in structural appendages;” but the conjecture of the author leaves the problem scarcely less obscure than before. Struck with the mere supplemental presence of the tusks, the absence of all apparent use serving to distinguish them from the essential organs of the creature, Dr. Holland concludes that their production is a process incident, but not ancillary, to other important ends, especially connected with the vital functions of the trunk and the marvellous motive powers inherent to it; his conjecture is, that they are “a species of safety valve of the animal œconomy,”—and that “they owe their development to the predominance of the senses of touch and smell, conjointly with the muscular motions of which the exercise of these is accompanied.” “Had there been no proboscis,” he thinks, “there would have been no supplementary appendages,—the former creates the latter.” (Pp. 246, 271.)
28 See Notes on the Natural History of Ceylon by Sir J. Emerson Tennent, p. 60. Sir S. Baker adds as a distinctive feature of the African elephant that its “back is concave while that of the Indian variety is convex.” (The Albert Nyanza, vol. 1. p. 274.)
29 A native of rank informed me, that “the tail of a high-caste elephant will sometimes touch the ground, but such are very rare.”
30 This is confirmed by the fact that the scar of the ancle wound, occasioned by the rope on the legs of those which have been captured by noosing, presents precisely the same tint when thoroughly healed.
31 Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 254, A.D. 433.
32 Pallegoix, Siam, etc. vol. i. p. 152.
33 Mahawanso, ch. xviii. p. 111. The Hindu sovereigns of Orissa, in the middle ages, bore the style of Gajapati, “powerful in elephants.” (Asiat. Res. xv. 253.)
34 Herod. l. i. c. 189.
35 Ibid. l. ii. c. 38.
36 Armandi, Hist. Milit. des Eléphants, lib. ii. c. x. p. 380. Horace mentions a white elephant as having been exhibited at Rome: “Sive elephas albus vulgi converteret ora.” (Hor. Ep. ii. 196.)
37 After writing the above, I was permitted by the late Dr. Harrison, of Dublin, to see some accurate drawings of the brain of an elephant, which he had the opportunity of dissecting in 1847; and on looking to that of the base, I have found a remarkable verification of the information which I had previously collected in Ceylon.
The small figure A is the ganglion of the fifth nerve, showing the small motor and large sensitive portion.
The olfactory lobes, from which the olfactory nerves proceed, are large, whilst the optic and muscular nerves of the orbit are singularly small for so vast an animal; and one is immediately struck by the prodigious size of the fifth nerve, which supplies the proboscis with its exquisite sensibility, as well as by the great size of the motor portion of the seventh, which supplies the same organ with its power of movement and action.
38 Menageries, etc. “The Elephant,” p. 27.
39 Major Rogers. An account of this singular adventure will be found in the Ceylon Miscellany for 1842, vol. i. p. 221.
40 Menageries, etc. “The Elephant,” ch. iii. p. 68.
41 Aristotle, De Anim. lib. iv. c. 9, ὁμοῖον σάλπιγγι. See also Pliny, lib. x. ch. cxiii. A manuscript of the 15th century in the British Museum, containing the romance of “Alexander,” which is probably of the fifteenth century, is interspersed with drawings illustrative of the strange animals of the East. Amongst them are two elephants, whose trunks are literally in the form of trumpets with expanded mouths. See Wright’s Archæological Album, p. 176, and M.S. Reg. 15, e. vi. Brit. Mus.
42 Pallegoix, in his Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, adverts to a sound produced by the elephant when weary: “quand il est fatigué, il frappe la terre avec sa trompe, et en tire un son semblable à celui du cor.” (Tom. i. p. 151.)
43 For an explanation of the term “rogue” as applied to an elephant, see p. 47.
44 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)
45 Shaw’s Zoology. Lond. 1806. vol. i. p. 216; Armandi, Hist. Milit. des Eléphants, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2.
46 Wolf’s Life and adventures, etc. 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.
47 Denham’s Travels, etc. 4to, p. 220. 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.”
48 Vulgar Errors, book iii. chap. 1. The earliest English writer who promulgated this error was Alexander Neckham, who in his treatise De Naturis Rerum, composed in the 12th century, quotes Cassiodorus and accepts his assertion that the elephant has no joints, chap. cxliii. Neckham repeats the statement in his poem De Laudibus Divinæ Sapientiæ, v. 47.
49 Machlis (said to be derived from α, priv., and κλίνω, cubo, quod non cubat). “Moreover in the island of Scandinavia there is a beast called Machlis, that hath neither ioynt in the hough, nor pasternes in his hind legs, and therefore he never lieth down, but sleepeth leaning to a tree, wherefore the hunters that lie in wait for these beasts cut downe the trees while they are asleepe, and so take them; otherwise they should never be taken, they are so swift of foot that it is wonderful.” (Pliny, Natur. Hist. Transl. Philemon Holland, book viii. ch. xv. p. 200.)
50 “Sunt item quæ appellantur Alces. Harum est consimilis capreis figura, et varietas pellium; sed magnitudine paulo antecedunt, mutilæque sunt cornibus, et crura sine nodis articulisque habent; neque quietis causa procumbunt; neque, si quo afflictæ casu considerunt, erigere sese aut sublevare possunt. His sunt arbores pro cubilibus; ad eas sese applicant, atque ita, paulum modo reclinatæ, quietem capiunt, quarum ex vestigiis cum est animadversum a venatoribus, quo se recipere consueverint, omnes eo loco, aut a radicibus subruunt aut accidunt arbores tantum, ut summa species earum stantium relinquatur. Huc cum se consuetudine reclinaverint, infirmas arbores pondere affligunt, atque una ipsæ concidunt.” (Cæsar, De Bello Gall. lib. vi. ch. xxvii.)
The same fiction was extended by the early Arabian travellers to the rhinoceros, and in the MS. of the voyages of the “Two Mahometans,” it is stated that the rhinoceros of Sumatra “n’a point d’articulation au genou ni à la main.” (Relations des Voyages, etc. Paris, 1845, vol. i. p. 29.)
51 Evelyn, who was a contemporary and friend of Sir Thomas Browne, observes in his diary, August 13, 1641, on arriving at Rotterdam, “here I first saw an elephant: it was a beast of a monstrous size, yet as flexible and nimble in the joints, contrary to the vulgar tradition, as could be imagined from so prodigious a bulk and strange fabric.” (Vol. i. p. 20.)
52 In his Natural History, Aristotle speaks of Ctesias as οὐκ ὣν ἀξιόπιστος. (L. viii. c. 27.)
53 “When an animal moves progressively an hypothenuse is produced, which is equal in power to the magnitude that is quiescent, and to that which is intermediate. But since the members are equal, it is necessary that the member which is quiescent should be inflected either in the knee or in the incurvation, if the animal that walks is without knees. It is possible, however, for the leg to be moved, when not inflected, in the same manner as infants creep; and there is an ancient report of this kind about elephants, which is not true, for such animals as these, are moved in consequence of an inflection taking place either in their shoulders or hips.” (Aristotle, De Ingressu Anim. ch. ix. Taylor’s Transl.)
54 Aristotle, De Animal, lib. ii. ch. i. It is curious that Taylor, in his translation of this passage, was so strongly imbued with the “grey-headed errour,” that in order to elucidate the somewhat obscure meaning of Aristotle, he has actually interpolated the text with the exploded fallacy of Ctesias, and after the word reclining to sleep, has inserted the words “leaning against some wall or tree,” which are not to be found in the original.
55 Ζῷον δὲ ἄναρθρον συνιέναι καὶ ῥυθμοῦ καὶ μέλους, καὶ φυλάττειν σχῆμα φύσεως δῶρα ταῦτα ἅμα καὶ ἰδιότης καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐκπληκτική. (Ælian, De Nat. Anim. lib. ii. cap. xi.)
56 Eginhard, Vita Karoli, c. xvi. and Annales Francorum, A. D. 810.
57 “Sed idem Julius, unum de elephantibus mentiens, falso loquitur; dicens elephantem nunquam jacere; dum ille sicut bos certissime jacet, ut populi communiter regni Francorum elephantem, in tempore Imperatoris Karoli, viderunt. Sed, forsitan, ideo hoc de elephante ficte æstimando scriptum est, eo quod genua et suffragines sui nisi quando jacet, non palam apparent.” (Dicuilus, De Mensura Orbis Terræ, c. vii.)
58 Cotton MSS. Nero. D. i. fol. 168, b.
59 Arundel MSS. No. 292, fol. 4, &c. It has been printed in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. i. p. 208, by Mr. Wright, to whom I am indebted for the following rendering of the passage referred to:—
60 One of the most venerable authorities by whom the fallacy was transmitted to modern times was Philip de Thaun, who wrote, about the year 1121, A. D. his Livre des Créatures, dedicated to Adelaide of Louvaine, Queen of Henry I. of England. In the copy of it printed by the Historical Society of Science in 1841, and edited by Mr. Wright, the following passage occurs:—