tern coast to Tangalle on the south-east, there is no
part of Ceylon in which elephants may not be said to abound; even close
to the environs of the most populous localities of the interior. They
frequent both the open plains and the deep forests; and their footsteps
are to be seen wherever food and shade, vegetation and water[1], allure
them, alike on the summits of the loftiest mountains, and on the borders
of the tanks and lowland streams.

[Footnote 1: 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 [Greek: elephas], 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 [Greek: eleph]; 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 [Greek: antos] is
still unaccounted for; and POTT has sought to remove the difficulty by
introducing the Arabic _hindi_, Indian, s thus making _eleph-hindi_,
"_bos Indicus_." The conversion of _hindi_ into [Greek: antos] is an
obstacle, but here the example of "tamarind" comes to aid; _tamar
hindi_, the "Indian date," which in mediaeval Greek forms [Greek:
tamarenti]. A theory of Benary, that helhephas 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 _airarata_ or
_airavana_, a modification of _airavanta_, "son of the ocean," which
again comes from _iravat_, "abounding in water." "Nous aurions done
ainsi, comme correlatif du gree [Greek: elephanto], une ancienne forme,
_airavanta_ ou _ailavanta_, affaiblie plus tard en _airavata_ ou
_airavana_.... On connait la predilection de l'elephant pour le
voisinage des fleuves, et son amour