of the elephant is known as "trumpeting" by the hunters in Ceylon. Their
cry when in pain, or when subjected to compulsion, is a grunt or a deep
groan from the throat, with the proboscis curled upwards and the lips
wide apart.

[Footnote 1: _Menageries, &c._, "The Elephant," ch. iii. p. 68.]

[Footnote 2: ARISTOTLE, _De Anim_., lib. iv. c. 9. "[Greek: homoion
salpingi]." See also PLINY, lib. x. ch. cxiii. A manuscript 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 form of _trumpets with expanded
mouths_. See WRIGHT'S _Archaeological Album_, p. 176.]

Should the attention of an individual in the herd be attracted by any
unusual appearance in the forest, the intelligence is rapidly
communicated by a low suppressed sound made by the lips, somewhat
resembling the twittering of a bird, and described by the hunters by the
word "_prut_."

A very remarkable noise has been described to me by more than one
individual, who has come unexpectedly upon a herd during the night, when
the alarm of the elephants was apparently too great to be satisfied with
the stealthy note of warning just described. On these occasions the
sound produced resembled the hollow booming of an empty tun when struck
with a wooden mallet or a muffled sledge. Major MACREADY, Military
Secretary in Ceylon in 1836, who heard it by night amongst the wild
elephants in the great forest of Bintenne, describes it as "a sort of
banging noise like a cooper hammering a cask;" and Major SKINNER is of
opinion that it must be produced by the elephant striking his sides
rapidly and forcibly with his trunk. Mr. CRIPPS informs me that he has
more than once seen an elephant, when surprised or alarmed, produce this
sound by striking the ground forcibly with the flat side of the trunk;
and this movement was instantly succeeded by raising it again, and
pointing it in the direction whence the alarm proceeded, as if to
ascertain by the sense of smell the nature of the threatened danger. As
this strange sound is generally mingled with the bellowing and ordinary
trumpeting of the herd, it is in all probability a device resorted to,
not alone for warning their companions of some approaching peril, but
also for the additional purpose of terrifying unseen intruders.[1]

[Footnote 1: PAL