pour l'eau, dont l'abondance est
necessaire a son bien-etre." This Sanskrit name, PICTET supposes, may
have been carried to the West by the Phoenicians, 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 Gooneratne 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.]

From time immemorial the natives have been taught to capture and tame
them and the export of elephants from Ceylon to India has been going on
without interruption from the period of the first Punic War.[1] In later
times all elephants were the property of the Kandyan crown; and their
capture or slaughter without the royal permission was classed amongst
the gravest offences in the criminal code.

[Footnote 1: AELIAN, _de Nat. Anim._ lib. xvi. c. 18; COSMAS INDICOPL.,
p. 128.]

In recent years there is reason to believe that their numbers have
become considerably reduced. They have entirely disappeared from
localities in which they were formerly numerous[1]; smaller herds have
been taken in the periodical captures for the government service, and
hunters returning from the chase report them to be growing scarce. In
consequence of this diminution the peasantry in some parts of the island
have even suspended the ancient practice of keeping watchers and fires
by night to drive away the elephants from their growing crops.[2] The
opening of roads and the clearing of the mountain forests of Kandy for
the cultivation of coffee, have forced the animals to retire to the low
country, where again they have been