1X WEIGHT OF TUSKS Z 
NO 
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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 Afmrcan 
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 Ilbs., 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’ weighed 188 lbs. 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, Elephas indicus (or Huelephas 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. 
