TUSKS AND TUSKERS 



and upright upon its pillar-like legs. In other beasts 

 there is a bend, or there are bends, in the limbs between 

 their origin from the trunk and their implantation 

 upon earth. The elephant is also the only living 

 ungulate animal, except the hyrax, which has retained 

 many toes. In other ungulates one or more have dis- 

 appeared upon both hind and fore limbs. Its scanty 

 covering of hair betrays the ungulate as does also the 

 thick skin. The elephant is as pachydermatous as 

 the rhinoceros. Though divested for the most part of 

 a hairy covering, the newly born elephant is much more 

 liberally provided with hair, a fact which recalls 

 the mammoth of antiquity. That the trunk is an essen- 

 tial of an elephant everyone knows, though it is not a 

 matter of universal knowledge that this organ is merely 

 the prolonged snout plus the upper lip. Hence it is 

 not merely a long nose as caricaturists would some- 

 times have us believe. The nostrils are at the end 

 of this lithe trunk, which is also a tactile and prehensile 

 organ of value to its possessor. The tusks are of course 

 the principal cause of the commencing rarity of the 

 elephant, particularly the African species. They are 

 really great persistent incisor teeth, entirely com- 

 parable to those of rodents, since they grow perpetu- 

 ally through the life of the animal. The Chinese have 

 a legend concerning the fossil ivory met with in nor- 

 thern Asia, that the teeth are the remains of a gigantic 

 and underground rat. The legend has so far a basis in 

 truth that the long and persistently growing teeth of 

 the two animals are the same kind of teeth. The two 

 kinds of elephants are always to be seen at the Zoo. 

 The notorious Jumbo and his helpmeet Alice were 

 African elephants, which grow to rather a larger size, 

 and are to a certain extent a more primitive type of 

 elephant, than the Eastern form ; they range from 

 India through some of the larger islands of the Malay 



