INDEX. 



from the continent into islands some leagues distance ; fre j 

 quently migrate from one country to another, and why ; 

 their food of the vegetable kind, loathing all sort of animal 

 diet ; one finding a spot of good pasture invites the rest to 

 partake of it ; precautions by Negroes and Indians against 

 them ; they often break through their fences, destroy the 

 harvest, overturn their habitations, and then retreat in order 

 as they made the irruption ; looks with attention and friend- 

 ship at its master ; its ears wipe its eyes and cover them 

 against the dust and flies ; it likes music, learns to beat 

 time, move in measure, and join its voice to the sound of 

 the drum and trumpet ; is pleased with the odours that de- 

 light man; the orange-flower particularly grateful to its 

 taste and smell ; picks up flowers, and is pleased with the 

 scent ; seeks the most odoriferous plants for food ; prefers 

 the cocoa, the banana, the palm, and the sago tree to all 

 others ; eats plants to the roots ; their sense of touching 

 most delicate ; description of its trunk ; serving all the pur- 

 poses of a hand ; breathes, drinks, and smells through the 

 trunk ; takes a pin from the ground, unties knots of a rope, 

 unlocks a door, and writes with a pen, iii. 331. An object 

 too large for the trunk to grasp is sucked up by its breath, 

 lifted, and sustained ; the trunk its organ of smelling, of 

 touching, of suction, of ornament, and defence ; its neck so 

 short that'it must turn about to discover what is behind it ; 

 how the hunters escape its resentment ; a description of its 

 legs ; while young it bends the legs, but when old or sickly 

 it wants human assistance, and chooses to sleep standing ; 

 a description of its feet and of its tusks ; these with age be- 

 come so heavy, that it is obliged to rest them in holes in 

 the walls of its stall ; they are two ; their amazing size ; 

 they proceed from the upper jaw, not from the frontal 

 bones, and are not horns as some have supposed, nor ever 

 shed in a domestic state ; ^Elian saw an elephant writing 

 Latin characters on a board, his keeper only shewing him 

 the figure of each letter; extraordinary manner of eating; 

 is not a ruminating animal ; its stomach and intestines re- 

 semble those of a horse ; opinion that the young elephant 

 sucks with its trunk, not with its mouth, referred to future 

 discoverers ; the skin not covered with hair, a few bristles 

 in the scars and wrinkles of the body, and thinly scattered 

 over the skin ; the hide resembles the bark of an old tree, 

 more than the skin of an animal ; is subject to that dis- 

 order known by the name of elephantiasis, or Arabian le- 

 prosy ; in what manner the Indians endeavour to prevent 

 it ; the flies torment this animal incessantly ; what arts it 

 tries to keep them off; in a state of nature, it rarely quits 

 the river, and often stands in water up to the belly ; from 

 time immemorial employed for the purposes of labour, of 



