The Taprobanian (2.1887)

June, 1887.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

71

&c. most occur, though this maybe due solely to the
climate and vegetation.
It . was the habit of the Vaeddas and other forest
rovers to hide the tusks of any elephant that was
found by them, usually burying them, whether for
use in reserve, or to prevent ivory-seekers roaming
the forest, is uncertain. The idle' story quoted by
Tennent, that elephants retire to a common cemetery
when about to die, I never heard except amongst
the credulous classes of townsmen. I never met a
hunter who believed such a myth.
The fact is that such elephants retire to some very
secluded forest, near water, and there die. The
speedy scattering of the bones, and the rapid decay
of all except the leg bones and teeth, accounts for
their not being often met with. As far as I can
judge, pigs carry away the bones, when the flesh
has decayed, tempted by the dried gristle that
adheres to them. Jackals seem to play a very
small part, if any, in the dispersion of such bones,
the jackal not frequenting the dense forests, to which
a sick elephant naturally retires. Hence leg bones
of elephants are occasionally seen on the muddy
banks of forest pools, where the foresters know
for certain that an elephant did not die. A pig,
wallowing there, had brought the bone from the forest.
In the densest forests, and near water, one often
sees such isolated bones. Very rarely it is known
that an elephant, crossing a stream, will be borne
down by the current, and perhaps eventually carried
out to sea. In such case the carcase might be
preserved whole under the alluvium of the flood.
Otherwise the bones of the elephants swarming
in the wilder forests, are only preserved here and
there, by the submersion of a leg bone in the mud
of a forest pool, or the accumulation of surface soil
around a tooth. It may be added here that the
greatest destruction of animal substance by carni-
vorous beasts in Ceylon is due to pigs. Leopards
kill and eat portions of deer and of pigs and buffalo
calves, and jackals gnaw the carcase of dead beasts
found near villages and in open country. These,
however, from the palaeontological point of view
contribute little to the disposal of the carcasses of
the beasts that throng the forests. It is the pigs
and the maggots that may be said solely to dispose
of these. Nothing comes amiss to the ubiquitous,
keen-scented pig, who wanders over a vast extent
of ground, constantly snuffing for a taint in the air,
to guide him to his favourite food, a putrid
carcass. For a similar reason the bones of a dead
buffalo, always found in dense forest, and near
water pools, are sometimes found quite isolated.
The smaller bones however, drying rapidly, and
being speedily divested of gristle, afford no tempta-
tion to the pigs, after a few days’ exposure. Hence
numerous small broken bones lie scattered on the
surface where the carcass lay, and the skull, with

the softest parts bitten off, and the larger bones,
may be found within fifty yards of them. They are
evidently not worth carrying off to be mumbled at
the pool where the pigs wallow, and are probably
too hard to be acceptable to deer.
These bones would have decayed entirely by the
fourth year, excepting perhaps the core of the
horns. It often happens that the pigs during a
drought eat out the whole carcass of the buffalo,
and scatter the larger bones, leaving the top of the
skull and perhaps a pastern or two attached to the
skin, the harder parts of which in the dry season
resist their appetite. When a flood, as is usual
after drought, passes over the lower grounds of a
forest, this skin, with the top of the skull, floats
off, and may often reach the river or tank. Here
the hide becoming sodden, it sinks, and eventually
the skull is left in some alluvial deposit, perhaps
miles off the other bones of the skeleton. In the
low grounds frequented by buffalos, and liable to
annual drought, with floods in November, this is
a common occurrence. It must be noted that
the struggle for existence is keenest during the
drought, and it is then that sickly or aged buffalos
or deer die off. With regards to pigs the case is
different. Ordinarily I have never found their
carcasses—presumably eaten up by their cannibal
neighbours. During murrain however, when car-
casses abound, the pigs feeding on the dead buffalos,
get a disease from which they die also. The num-
ber of carcasses thus precludes their being all eaten,
and we then find the pigs lying dead in shallow
pools and little splashes of water among the rocks,
the flesh removed by maggots, but the bones all held
together by the hide. At the next rainy season, a
passing pig worries this hide, and perhaps drags it a
little distance, but the dry bones are left more or less
in a heap. These decay in the second year, but if a
flood should have washed the skeleton, enclosed
in its dry hide, out into the river or tank, the
alluvial deposit that surrounds it when sodden,
would enclose the whole skeleton, and not as in the
buffalo, the top of the skull or a pastern only. Of
pigs that die in ordinary years, the jaw bones are
most often met with, or the top of the skull.
The carcasses of monkeys are seldom seen. I have
found the skulls of several among rocks, but it is
probable they had been killed by leopards. The
bones are very perishable, and even round a Vaedda
camp, where they have recently been eaten by
scores, scarcely a bit of bone can be seen, and even
few teeth. In Malacca, I twice found the dead
bodies of monkeys floating down the Perak river,
never in Ceylon did I so meet with them.
Sambur deer and spotted deer are often killed by
leopards, or die naturally. The bones are found
scattered over a space of twenty yards, those of the
legs, and the skull with the horns attached, being