Part 74 (1/2)
DESCRIPTION.--General colour dull grey (almost Chinchilla colour), with a slight rufescent tinge on the face and back; lower parts white; fur very soft, about 0.9 inch long in the middle of the back; glossy leaden black at the base and for about two-thirds of its length, very pale ashy grey towards the end; the extreme tips of many hairs dark brown, and on the back the tips of all the hairs are brownish; the sides are almost pure light ashy; rump still paler; feet white; hair on the face long, light brown on the forehead, greyer on the nose, pure grey on the sides of the head. A few of the upper whiskers black, the rest white; ears large round with rather thin white hairs inside, very short hairs close to the margin, white outside, black inside, outer surface covered with whitish hairs, which become long near the base of the ear. (_See_ Blanford's 'Scientific Results, Second Yarkand Mission,' p. 77, and plate vii. fig. 1.)
SIZE.-About 7 inches.
NO. 424. LAGOMYS RUFESCENS.
_The Red Pika_.
HABITAT.--Afghanistan, Persia.
DESCRIPTION.--Pale sandy red, darker on the top of the head, the shoulders and fore part of back; two large patches behind the ears; the feet and the under-parts are pale buff yellow; ears moderately large, subovate and well clad, rusty yellow, paler on the under part; whiskers very long, brown, a few brownish white; toe-pads blackish.
SIZE.-About 8 inches.
This species has been found in the rocky hills of Cabul. _Lagomys Hodgsonii_, from Lahoul, Ladakh and Kulu, is considered to be the same as the above, and _L. Nipalensis_, described by Waterhouse, as synonymous with _L. Roylei_.
Under the systems of older naturalists the thick-skinned animals were lumped together under the order UNGULATA, or _hoofed animals_, subdivided by Cuvier into _Pachydermata_, or thick-skinned non-ruminants, and _Ruminantia_, or ruminating animals; but neither the elephant nor the coney can be called hoofed animals, and in other respects they so entirely differ from the rest that recent systematists have separated them into three distinct orders--_Proboscidea_, _Hyracoidea_ and _Ungulata_, which cla.s.sification I here adopt.
ORDER PROBOSCIDEA.
It seems a strange jump from the order which contains the smallest mammal, the little harvest mouse, to that which contains the gigantic elephant--a step from the ridiculous to the sublime; yet there are points of affinity between the little mouse and the giant tusker to which I will allude further on, and which bring together these two unequal links in the great chain of nature. The order Proboscidea, or animals whose noses are prolonged into a flexible trunk, consists of one genus containing two living species only--the Indian and African Elephants. To this in the fossil world are added two more genera--the _Mastodon_ and _Dinotherium_.
The elephant is one of the oldest known of animals. Frequent mention is made in the Scriptures and ancient writings of the use of ivory.
In the First Book of Kings and the Second of Chronicles, it is mentioned how Solomon's s.h.i.+ps brought every three years from Tars.h.i.+sh gold and silver and ivory (or elephants' teeth) apes and peac.o.c.ks. In the Apocrypha the animal itself, and its use in war, is mentioned; in the old Sanscrit writings it frequently appears.
Aristotle and Pliny were firm believers in the superst.i.tion which prevailed, even to more recent times, that it had no joints.
”The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; His legs are for necessity, not flexure”--
says Shakespeare. Even down to the last century did this notion prevail, so little did people know of this animal. The supposition that he slept leaning against a tree is to be traced in Thomson's 'Seasons'--
”Or where the Ganges rolls his sacred waves Leans the huge elephant.”
Again, Montgomery says--
”Beneath the palm which he was wont to make His prop in slumber.”
At a very early period elephants were used in war, not only by the Indian but the African nations. In the first Punic war (B.C. 264-241) they were used considerably by the Carthaginians, and in the second Punic war Hannibal carried thirty-seven of them across the Alps. In the wars of the Moghuls they were used extensively. The domestication of the African elephant has now entirely ceased; there is however no reason why this n.o.ble animal should not be made as useful as its Indian brother; it is a bigger animal, and as tractable, judging from the specimens in menageries. It was trained in the time of the Romans for performances in the arena, and swelled the pomp of military triumphs, when, as Macaulay, I think, in his 'Lays of Ancient Rome,'
says, the people wondered at--
”The monstrous beast that had A serpent for a hand.”
It seems a cruel shame, when one comes to think of it, that thousands of these n.o.ble animals should perish annually by all sorts of ign.o.ble means--pitfalls, hamstringing, poisoned arrows, and a few here and there shot with more or less daring by adventurous sportsmen, only for the sake of their magnificent tusks.
Few people think, as they leisurely cut open the pages of a new book or play with their ivory-handled dessert-knives after dinner, of the life that has once been the lot of that inanimate substance, so beautiful in its texture, so prized from time immemorial; still less do they think, for the majority do not know, of the enormous loss of life entailed in purveying this luxury for the market. An elephant is a long-lived beast; it is difficult to say what is the extent of its individual existence; at fifty years it is in its prime, and its reproduction is in ratio slower than animals of shorter life, yet what countless herds must there be in Central Africa when we consider that the annual requirements of Sheffield alone are reported to be upwards of 46,000 tusks, which represent 23,000 elephants a year for the commerce of one single city! The African elephant must be decreasing, even as it has been extirpated in the north of that continent, where it abounded in the time of the Carthaginians, and the time may come when ivory shall be counted as one of the precious things of the past. Even now the price is going up, and is nearly double what it was a year ago. Now enhanced price means either greater demand or deficient supply, and it is probably to this last we must look for an answer to the question. True it is that if we want ivory animals must be killed to get it, for the notion that some people have gained from obsolete works on natural history, to the effect that elephants shed their tusks, is an erroneous one. It is generally supposed that elephants do not shed their tusks at all, not even milk-teeth, but that they grow _ab initio_, as do the incisors of rodents, from a persistent pulp, and continue growing through life.
Mr. G. P. Sanderson, the author of 'Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts,' whom I have to thank for much and valuable information about the habits of these animals, a.s.sured me, when I spoke to him about the popular idea of there being milk-tusks, that he had watched elephants from their birth, and had never known them to shed their tusks, nor had his mahouts ever found a shed tusk; but Mr. Tegetmeier has pointed out that there are skulls in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, showing both the milk and permanent tusks, the latter pus.h.i.+ng forward the former, which are absorbed to a great extent, and leave nothing but a little blackened stump, the size of one's finger. This was brought to my notice by a correspondent of _The Asian_, ”Smooth-bore,” and I have lately had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Tegetmeier, and speaking to him on the subject. There is apparently no limit to the growth of tusks, so that under favourable circ.u.mstances they might attain enormous dimensions, owing to the age of the animal, and absence of the attrition which keeps the incisors of rodents down. As in the case of rodents, malformations of whose incisors I have alluded to some time back, the tusks of elephants a.s.sume various freaks. I have heard of their overlapping and crossing the trunk in a manner to impede the free use of that organ. The tusks of fossil elephants are in many cases gigantic. There is a head in the Indian Museum, of which the tusks _outside the socket_ measure 9-3/4 feet, and are of very curious formation. The two run parallel some distance, and then diverge, which would lead one to suppose that the animal inhabited open country, for such a formation would be extremely uncomfortable in thick forest. That tusks of such magnitude are not found nowadays is probably due to the fact that the elephant has more enemies, the most formidable of all being man, which prevent his reaching the great age of those of the fossil periods. It may be said, by those who disbelieve in the extermination of this animal, that, as elephants have provided ivory for several thousand years, they will go on doing so; but I would remind them that in olden days ivory was an article in limited demand, being used chiefly by kings and great n.o.bles; it is only of late years that it has increased more than a hundredfold. Our forefathers used buck-horn handled knives, and they were without the thousand-and-one little articles of luxury which are now made of ivory; even the requirements of the ancient world drove the elephant away from the coasts, where Solomon, and later still the Romans, got their ivory; and now the girdle round the remaining herds in Central Africa is being narrowed day by day. Mr.
Sanderson is of opinion that it is not decreasing in India under the present restrictions, but there is no doubt the reckless slaughter of them in Ceylon has greatly diminished their numbers. Sir Emerson Tennent states that the Government reward was claimed for 3,500 destroyed in part of the northern provinces alone in three years prior to 1848, and between 1851 and 1856, 2000 were killed in the southern provinces.