some "lay motionless on the ground, with no other indication of suffering
than the tears which suffused their eyes and flowed incessantly."
Speaking of another elephant he says, "When overpowered and made fast,
his grief was most affecting; his violence sank to utter prostration,
and he lay on the ground, uttering choking cries, with tears trickling
down his cheeks."[20] In the Zoological Gardens the keeper of the Indian
elephants positively asserts that he has several times seen tears
rolling down the face of the old female, when distressed by the removal
of the young one. Hence I was extremely anxious to ascertain,
as an extension of the relation between the contraction of the orbicular
muscles and the shedding of tears in man, whether elephants when screaming
or trumpeting loudly contract these muscles. At Mr. Bartlett's
desire the keeper ordered the old and the young elephant to trumpet;
and we repeatedly saw in both animals that, just as the trumpeting began,
the orbicular muscles, especially the lower ones, were distinctly contracted.
On a subsequent occasion the keeper made the old elephant trumpet
much more loudly, and invariably both the upper and lower orbicular
muscles were strongly contracted, and now in an equal degree.
It is a singular fact that the African elephant, which, however, is so
different from the Indian species that it is placed by some naturalists
in a distinct sub-genus, when made on two occasions to trumpet loudly,
exhibited no trace of the contraction of the orbicular muscles.


[20] `Ceylon,' 3rd edit. 1859, vol. ii. pp. 364, 376.
I applied to Mr. Thwaites, in Ceylon, for further information
with respect to the weeping of the elephant; and in consequence
received a letter from the Rev. Mr Glenie, who, with others,
kindly observed for me a herd of recently captured elephants.
These, when irritated, screamed violently; but it is remarkable that they