WEIGHT OF TUSKS 223 



Elephant is a long-lived animal. It is said that it hardly reaches 

 proper maturity before forty, and that 150 years is not beyond 

 probability in the way of longevity. Even longer periods have 

 been assigned to it. 



The tusks of the Elephant are by no means necessarily sexual 

 adornments, used for fighting purposes only. The African 

 Elephant is a most "industrious digger," and grubs up innumer- 

 able roots as food. It appears to be a fact that during these 

 operations the right tusk is mainly used, and in consequence that 

 tusk is shorter as well as thinner than the other. Two average 

 tusks would weigh respectively 75 and 65 Ibs., the latter of 

 course being the weight of the more worn right tusk. These 

 weights, it should be observed, by no means indicate the limits 

 to which finely-developed tusks can attain. The very heaviest 

 tusk known to Sir Samuel Baker l weighed 188 Ibs. This was 

 sold at an ivory sale in London in the year 1874. The pace of 

 the African Elephant, says the same authority, is at most at the 

 rate of fifteen miles an hour at first, and of course in a furious 

 rush. This pace cannot be kept up for more than two or three 

 hundred yards, after which ten miles an hour is a better ap- 

 proximation to the rate which can be kept up for long 

 distances. 



The Indian Elephant, Eleplias indicus (or Euelephas indicus, if 

 the genus Loxodon is to be accepted), is better known and has 

 been longer known than the African. It occurs in India and 

 Ceylon, and in some of the Malayan islands, the Elephants of 

 which latter parts of the world have been regarded as a distinct 

 form, an apparently unnecessary procedure. 



This species does not stand so high at the shoulder as the 

 African ; its back is more rounded in the middle. The trunk has 

 but one pointed tip ; there are five nails on the fore- and four on 

 the hind-feet: As this species comes from India and the East, it 

 has been longer as well as better known than the African form. 

 Thus many of the stories and legends that have congregated round 

 Elephants apply really to this form. As is well known, the Indian 

 Elephant is much used as a beast of burden, and for other purposes 

 where its huge strength renders it invaluable. But its great draw- 

 back as a servant of man is its great independability. On the 

 one hand we have furious, vicious, and generally unreliable 

 1 Wild Beasts and their Ways, London, 1890. 



