PROFESSOR SCHLEGEL, adverting to the large export of elephants from Ceylon to the Indian continent, which has been carried on from time immemorial, suggests the caution with which naturalists, in investigating this question, should first satisfy themselves whether the elephants they examine are really natives of the mainland, or whether they have been brought to it from the islands.[1] “The extraordinary fact,” he observes in his letter to me, “of the identity thus established between the elephants of Ceylon and Sumatra; and the points in which they are found to differ from that of Bengal, leads to the question whether all the elephants of the Asiatic continent belong to one single species; or whether these vast regions may not produce in some quarter as yet unexplored the one hitherto found only in the two islands referred to?  It is highly desirable that naturalists who have the means and opportunity, should exert themselves to discover, whether any traces are to be found of the Ceylon elephant in the Dekkan; or of that of Sumatra in Cochin China or Siam.”

[Footnote 1:  A further inquiry suggests itself, how far the intermixture of the breed may have served to confound specific differences, in the case of elephants bred on the continent of India, from stock partially imported from Ceylon?]

To me the establishment of a fact so conclusively confirmatory of the theory I had ventured to broach, is productive of great satisfaction.  But it is not a little remarkable that the distinction should not long before have been discovered between the elephant of India and that of Ceylon.  Nor can it be regarded otherwise than as a singular illustration of “geographical distribution” that two remote islands should be thus shown to possess in common a species unknown in any other quarter of the globe.  As bearing on the ancient myth which represents both countries as forming parts of a submerged continent, the discovery is curious—­and it is equally interesting in connection with the circumstance alluded to by Gibbon, that amongst the early geographers and even down to a comparatively modern date, Sumatra and Ceylon were confounded; and grave doubts were entertained as to which of the two was the “Taprobane” of antiquity.  GEMMA FRISIUS, SEBASTIAN MUNSTER, JULIUS SCALIGER, ORTELIUS and MERCATOR contended for the former; SALMASIUS, BOCHART, CLUVERIUS, and VOSSIUS for Ceylon:  and the controversy did not cease till it was terminated by DELISLE about the beginning of the last century.

VIII.  CETACEA.—­Whales are so frequently seen that they have been captured within sight of Colombo, and more than once their carcases, after having been flinched by the whalers, have floated on shore near the lighthouse, tainting the atmosphere within the fort by their rapid decomposition.

Of this family, one of the most remarkable animals on the coast is the dugong[1], a phytophagous cetacean, numbers of which are attracted to the inlets, from the bay of Calpentyn to Adam’s Bridge, by the still water and the abundance of marine algae in these parts of the gulf.  One which was killed at Manaar and sent to me to Colombo[2] in 1847, measured upwards of seven feet in length; but specimens considerably larger have been taken at Calpentyn, and their flesh is represented as closely resembling veal.