is found, have never manifested
ability to domesticate it; and even as regards the more highly developed
races who inhabited the valley of the Nile, it is observable that the
elephant is nowhere to be found amongst the animals figured on the
monuments of ancient Egypt, whilst the camelopard, the lion, and even
the hippopotamus are represented. And although in later times the
knowledge of the art of training appears to have existed under the
Ptolemies, and on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, it admits of
no doubt that it was communicated by the more accomplished natives of
India who had settled there.[2]

[Footnote 1: AELIAN, lib. ii. cap. ii.]

[Footnote 2: See SCHLEGEL'S Essay on the Elephant and the Sphynx.
_Classical Journal_, No. lx. Although the trained elephant nowhere
appears upon the monuments of the Egyptians, the animal was not unknown
to them, and ivory and elephants are figured on the walls of Thebes and
Karnac amongst the spoils of Thothmes III., and the tribute paid to
Rameses I. The Island of Elephantine, in the Nile, near Assouan (Syene)
is styled in hieroglyphical writing "The Land of the Elephant;" but as
it is a mere rock, it probably owes its designation to its form. See Sir
GARDNER WILKINSON'S _Ancient Egyptians_, vol. i. pl. iv.; vol. v. p.
176. Above the first cataract of the Nile are two small islands, each
bearing the name of Phylae;--quaere, is the derivation of this word at all
connected with the Arabic term _fil_? See ante, p. 76, note. The
elephant figured in the sculptures of Nineveh is universally as wild,
not domesticated.]

Another favourite doctrine of the earlier visitors to the East seems to
me to be equally fallacious; PYRARD, BERNIER, PHILLIPE, THEVENOT, and
other travellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, proclaimed
the superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, in size, strength, and
sagacity, above those of all other parts of India[1]; and TAVERNIER in
particular is supposed to have stated that if a Ceylon elephant be
introduced amongst those bred in any other place, by an instinct of
nature they do him homage by laying their trunks to the ground, and
raising them reverentially. This passage has been so repeatedly quoted
in works on Ceylon that it has passed into an aphorism, and is always
adduced as a testimony to the surpassing intelligence of the elephants
of that island; although a reference to the original shows that
Tavernier's observations are not only f