ground by a rope,
with a piece of wood attached, being dangled over their foreheads,
near to the ground. The wood strikes against their trunk and
fore-feet, and to avoid the discomfort the elephant soon takes it
in its trunk, and carries it. It eventually learns to do this without
a rope being attached to the object."

Sir Emerson Tennent's account of the practice in Ceylon is similar.

As regards the size of elephants few people agree. The controversy
is as strong on this point as on the maximum size of tigers. I quite
believe few elephants attain to or exceed ten feet, still there are
one or two recorded instances, the most trustworthy of which is Mr.
Sanderson's measurement of the Sirmoor Rajah's elephant, which is
10 ft. 7-1/2 in. at the shoulder--a truly enormous animal. I have
heard of a tusker at Hyderabad that is over eleven feet, but we must
hold this open to doubt till an accurate measurement, for which I
have applied, is received. Elephants should be measured like a horse,
with a standard and cross bar, and not by means of a piece of string
over the rounded muscles of the shoulder. Kellaart, usually a most
accurate observer, mentions in his 'Prodromus Faunae Zeylanicae' his
having measured a Ceylon elephant nearly twelve feet high, but does
not say how it was done. Sir Joseph Fayrer has a photograph of an
enormous elephant belonging to the late Sir Jung Bahadur, a perfect
mountain of flesh.

* * * * *

We in India have nothing to do with the next order, HYRACOIDEA or
Conies, which are small animals, somewhat resembling short-eared
rabbits, but which from their dentition and skeleton are allied to
the rhinoceros and tapir. The Syrian coney is frequently mentioned
in the Old Testament, and was one of the animals prohibited for food
to the Jews, "because he cheweth the cud and divideth not the hoof."
The chewing of the cud was a mistake, for the coney does not do so,
but it has a way of moving its jaws which might lead to the idea that
it ruminates. In other parts of Scripture the habits of the animal
are more accurately depicted--"The rocks are a refuge for the
conies;" and again: "The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they
their houses in the rocks." Solomon says in the Proverbs: "There be
four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding
wise." These are the ants, for they prepare their meat in summer,
as we see here in India the stores laid up by th