wn.[1] So distinctive is this formation, and so self-sustaining the
configuration of the limbs, that an elephant shot in the brain, by Major
Rogers in 1836, was killed so instantaneously that it died literally _on
its knees_, and remained resting on them. About the year 1826, Captain
Dawson, the engineer of the great road to Kandy, over the Kaduganava
pass, shot an elephant at Hangwelle on the banks of the Kalany Ganga;
_it remained on its feet_, but so motionless, that after discharging a
few more balls, he was induced to go close to it, and found it dead.

[Footnote 1: So little is the elephant inclined to lie down in
captivity, and even after hard labour, that the keepers are generally
disposed to suspect illness when he betakes himself to this posture.
PHILE, in his poem _De Animalium Proprietate_, attributes the propensity
of the elephant to sleep on his legs, to the difficulty he experiences
in rising to his feet:

[Greek:
'Orthostaden de kai katheudei panychos
'HOt ouk anastesai men eucheros pelei.]

But this is a misapprehension.]

The real peculiarity in the elephant in lying down is, that he extends
his hind legs backwards as a man does when he kneels, instead of
bringing them under him like the horse or any other quadruped. The wise
purpose of this arrangement must be obvious to any one who observes the
struggle with which the horse _gets up_ from the ground, and the violent
efforts which he makes to raise himself erect. Such an exertion in the
case of the elephant, and the force requisite to apply a similar
movement to raise his weight (equal to four or five tons) would be
attended with a dangerous strain upon the muscles, and hence the simple
arrangement, which by enabling him to draw the hind feet gradually under
him, assists him to rise without a perceptible effort.

The same construction renders his gait not a "gallop," as it has been
somewhat loosely described[1], which would be too violent a motion for
so vast a body; but a shuffle, that he can increase at pleasure to a
pace as rapid as that of a man at full speed, but which he cannot
maintain for any considerable distance.

[Footnote 1: _Menageries, &c_. "The elephant," ch. i. Sir CHARLES BELL,
in his essay on _The Hand and its Mechanism_, which forms one of the
"Bridgewater Treatises," has exhibited the reasons deducible from
organisation, which show the incapacity of the elephant to _spring_ or
_leap_ like the horse and other anim