This species exists in most parts of Ceylon,
but I have seen it of a larger size at Newera Ellia thin in any
of the low-country districts.
Elephants are proverbially sagacious, both in their wild state
and when domesticated. I have previously described the building
of a dam by a tame elephant, which was an exhibition of reason
hardly to be expected in any animal. They are likewise
wonderfully sagacious in a wild state in preserving themselves
from accidents, to which, from their bulk and immense weight,
they would be particularly liable, such as the crumbling of the
verge of a precipice, the insecurity of a bridge or the
suffocating depth of mud in a lake.
It is the popular opinion, and I have seen it expressed in many
works, that the elephant shuns rough and rocky ground, over which
he moves with difficulty, and that he delights in level plains,
etc., etc. This may be the case in Africa, where his favorite
food, the mimosa, grows upon the plain, but in Ceylon it is
directly the contrary. In this country the elephant delights in
the most rugged localities; he rambles about rocky hills and
mountains with a nimbleness that no one can understand without
personal experience. So partial are elephants to rocky and
uneven ground that should the ruins of a mountain exist in rugged
fragments along a plain of low, thorny jungle, five chances to
one would be in favor of tracking the herd to this very spot,
where they would most likely be found, standing among the alleys
roamed by the fragments heaped around them.
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