It is perhaps from this popular belief in their almost illimitable age,
that the natives generally assert that the body of a dead elephant is
seldom or never to be discovered in the woods. And certain it is that
frequenters of the forest with whom I have conversed, whether European
or Singhalese, are consistent in their assurances that they have never
found the remains of an elephant that had died a natural death. One
chief, the Wannyah of the Trincomalie district, told a friend of mine,
that once after a severe murrain, which had swept the province, he found
the carcases of elephants that had died of the disease. On the other
hand, a European gentleman, who for thirty-six years without
intermission has been living in the jungle, ascending to the summits of
mountains in the prosecution of the trigonometrical survey, and
penetrating valleys in tracing roads and opening means of
communication,--one, too, who has made the habits of the wild elephant a
subject of constant observation and study,--has often expressed to me
his astonishment that after seeing many thousands of living elephants in
all possible situations, he had never yet found a single skeleton of a
dead one, except of those which had fallen by the rifle.[1]

[Footnote 1: This remark regarding the elephant of Ceylon does not
appear to extend to that of Africa, as I observe that BEAVER, in his
_African Memoranda,_ says that "the skeletons of old ones that have died
in the woods are frequently found."--_African Memoranda relative to an
attempt to establish British Settlements at the Island of Bulama_. Lond.
1815, p. 353.]

It has been suggested that the bones of the elephant, may be so porous
and spongy as to disappear in consequence of an early decomposition; but
this remark would not apply to the grinders or to the tusks; besides
which, the inference is at variance with the fact, that not only the
horns and teeth, but entire skeletons of deer, are frequently found in
the districts inhabited by the elephant.

The natives, to account for this popular belief, declare that the
survivors of the herd bury such of their companions as die a natural
death.[1] It is curious that this belief was current also amongst the
Greeks of the Lower Empire; and PHILE, writing early in the fourteenth
century, not only describes the younger elephants as tending the
wounded, but as burying the dead:

[Greek: "Otan d' episte tes teleutes o chronos Koinou telous amunan o
xenos p