Chap. 4.] ELEPHANTS. 247 



CHAP. 4. WONDERFUL THINGS WHICH HAVE BEEN DONE BY TUB 



ELEPHANT. 



These animals are well aware that the only spoil that we 

 are anxious to procure of them is the part which forms their 

 weapon of defence, by Jtiba, called their horns, but by He- 

 rodotus, a much older writer, as well as by general nsage and 

 more appropriately, their teeth. 17 Hence it is that, when their 

 tusks have fallen off, either by accident or from old age, they 

 bury them in the earth. 18 These tusks form the only real ivory, 

 and, even in these, the part which is covered by the flesh is 

 merely common bone, and of no value whatever ; though, in- 

 deed, of late, in consequence of the insufficient supply of ivory, ' 

 they have begun to cut the bones as well into thin plates. 

 Large teeth, in fact, are now rarely found, except in India, the 

 demands of luxury 19 having exhausted all those in our part of 

 the world. The youthfulness of the animal is ascertained by 

 the whiteness of the teeth. 20 These animals take the greatest 

 care of their teeth ; they pay especial attention to the point of 

 one of them, that it may not be found blunt when wanted for 

 combat ; the other they employ for various purposes, such as 

 digging up roots and pushing forward heavy weights. When 

 they are surrounded by the hunters, they place those in front 

 which have the smallest teeth, that the enemy may think that 

 the spoil is not worth the combat ; and afterwards, when 

 they are weary of resistance, they break off their teeth, by 



17 As to the tusks of the elephant, no doubt the opinion of Herodotus, 

 B. iii. c. 97, is correct, that they are teeth, and not horns. They are essen- 

 tially composed of the same substance with the other teeth, and, like them, 

 are inserted into the jaw, and not into the os frontis, as is the case with 

 horns. B. 



18 Not improbably, the great quantity of fossil ivory which has been 

 found, may have given rise to this tale. We have in Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 

 581, a long extract from Cuvier's " Recherches sur les ossements fossiles," 

 in which he gives an account of the parts of the world in which the bones 

 of the elephant have been discovered. B. 



19 Tables and bedsteads were not only covered or veneered with ivory 

 among the Romans, but, in the later times, made of the solid material, as 

 we learn from jElian and Athenseus. 



20 Plutarch, in his treatise on the Shrewdness of Animals, gives the 

 same statement respecting the whiteness of the teeth in the young animal, 

 B. 



