THICK-SKINNED QUADRUPEDS. 81 



Called Proboscidea) is a wonderful organ. It has in it 

 40,000 muscles interlaced together. These give it great 

 flexibility, and make it the hand of the elephant. On 

 the end of this hand is a small finger-like projection, 

 which is a feeler, and is also used in picking up small 

 objects. The Elephant gathers his food with his trunk, 

 and puts it into his mouth. He gets his drink also with 

 his trunk in this way he draws it up into the two nos- 

 trils of the trunk, it being prevented from going back 

 into the throat by a valve. When he drinks he turns 

 the end of the trunk into his mouth, and pours the water 

 in from it. He sometimes gives himself a shower-bath 

 by throwing water from his trunk over his body. It it 

 through the trunk that the Elephant sends forth his 

 trumpet-like voice. This organ is not only a hand, a 

 forcing and suction pump, and a trumpet, but it is also 

 the animal's nose. 



137. The neck of the Elephant is so short that he could 

 not possibly reach his food or drink without his trunk. 

 His food is chiefly grass, the leaves of trees, and roots. 

 These last he loosens with his tusks, using them as we 

 use a crowbar, and then he pulls them up with his trunk. 



138. Elephants congregate in large herds, sometimes 

 numbering hundreds, or even thousands ; and no sight 

 can be more grand than such a herd in the midst of the 

 magnificent scenery and rich verdure of an African land- 

 scape. The Elephant of India is more sagacious than that 

 of Africa, and is much used in traveling, and in hunting- 

 tigers, as described in 72. The African Elephant is not 

 at present tamed by man, and is hunted merely for the 

 sake of his tusks, from which very fine ivory is obtained. 

 The trade in tusks, both in Asia and Africa, is immense. 

 It requires annually many thousands of elephants to fur- 

 nish a supply of ivory to England alone. 



139. Although the Elephant is the largest of all the 

 terrestrial Mammalia, there are remains of extinct ani- 

 mals which reached a much larger size. This is the case 



