ELDER ELEPHANT. 



Yous, with a straight embryo, whose radicle is turned 

 towards the hilum ; no albumen. 



The plants belonging to this order are herbaceous 

 annuals with hollow stems, and opposite, exstipulate 

 leaves. They are fount! in marshy places in all quar- 

 ters of the globe. Their properties are not well 

 known. The chief genera of the order are Elatine, 

 Bergia, Merimea, and Crypta. The- species of the 

 genus Elatine, or water-wort, are natives of Europe, 

 and two of them are indigenous in Britain. The 

 Bcrgiaa are found at the Cape of Good Hope, and in 

 the East Indies, while Merimea is confined to South 

 America. 



ELDER is the Sambucus nigra of Linnaeus, a very 

 common plant everywhere. It belongs to the first clas's 

 of Linnaeus, and to the natural order Caprifoliacece. 

 The wood of this small tree has a very large pith 

 when young, but smaller in old stems, and then the 

 wood is remarkably hard and durable. Water dis- 

 tilled from the flowers is used as a cosmetic, and a 

 kind of wine is made from the ripe berries. There 

 are six varieties in gardens, all of which are increased 

 by cuttings. 



ELECAMPANE, is the Corvisartia helcnmm of 

 Merat, formerly the Inn/a helenium of Linnaeus. This 

 genus of plants is chiefly European ; several of them 

 natives of Britain. They are mostly perennials, bearing 

 yellow tlowers, and belong to the order Compotittc. 



ELEPHANT ( Elephas). A genus of Pachyder- 

 matous or thick-skinned mammalia, belonging to that 

 division of the order to which Cuvier gives the name 

 of Proboscidca, or animals which have the nose or 

 upper lip elongated, and forming a trunk or proboscis, 

 or other prehensile instrument. 



The elephant, has but few characters in common 

 with the rest of the order Pachydermata ; and indeed 

 that order is among the most perplexing in all the 

 mammalia, because the mere thickness of the skin is 

 not a good ground of classification. Thus it is im- 

 possible to give, under the title of the order, any 

 general account of all the genera ; and therefore it 

 becomes necessary to enter a little more into detail 

 of the characters of each genus. 



There is perhaps no animal respecting which less 

 apology is necessary in this respect than the elephant. 

 In point of size and strength, it stands foremost in 

 the whole class of land animals ; and though its saga- 

 city and docility have been greatly overrated, it is to 

 a considerable extent tractable, and in so far a sa- 

 gacious animal. We use these words in an animal 

 sense of course, and not with any reference to docility 

 and sagacity as predicated of human beings ; and we 

 may mention that the boasted sagacity of the elephant 

 is vastly inferior to f iiai of many varieties of the dog. 



Still the elephant is highly interesting in very many 

 points of view. It has been connected with the 

 power and state of eastern nations from very early 

 times ; and before the invention of fire-arms, the ele- 

 phant was regarded as a very powerful auxiliary in 

 war, and numbers of them were brought into battle, 

 not only in Asia, but in some parts of eastern Europe. 

 Even now the elephant is a useful appendage to an 

 Indian army ; but it is chiefly as a beast of burden, 

 in the transportation of artillery, and of baggage 

 which is too heavy for the more ordinary carrying 

 animals. He is also used as an appendage of state, 

 for which 'purpose himself and the houdah or crib, 

 which is fastened on his back, are both decked out in 

 the most gorgeous manner. But though the elephant 



J97 



has thus been made the servant of man for many pur- 

 poses, almost from time immemorial, it has never 

 been tamed or domesticated in the proper sense of 

 the word. Elephants have never lived in what may 

 be called companionship with society, and under the 

 protection of man, as has been the case with the dog, 

 the horse, and many other animals. There are a few 

 rare instances recorded in which elephants have bred 

 in a state of confinement, but those instances form 

 the exception the rare exception, and not the rule ; 

 and on account of them we cannot venture to say 

 that the elephant has ever been a domestic animal. 



There is another point of view in which the ele- 

 phant is of great interest, especially to those who 

 study the history of nature in its connection, both of 

 place and of time. Of living elephants there are only 

 two species, the Asiatic and the African, though 

 there are several varieties, apparently climatal, of the 

 former one. Of these there is not a vestige in any 

 other part of the world than those in which they are 

 at present found, unless it be the accidental bones of 

 one which has been brought from its native country 

 for the purpose of exhibition, and which, perishing 

 before the establishment of museums in which the 

 bones of strange animals are industriously collected, 

 had been buried by the way side. There are some 

 rather ludicrous instances of the bones of such ele- 

 phants being dug up, after the appearance of the 

 animal at the place had been forgotten, and gravely 

 considered as the bones of antediluvian or other giants 

 of the human race. The countries in which only the 

 two existing species of elephant are found, all have 

 the tropical character ; and as there is no evidence 

 of the animal being naturally out of them, we must 

 conclude that both are adapted to the forests and 

 marshes of those countries, and to them, only. 



There is, however, a third species of elephant, of 

 which there is no living specimen, though the remains 

 of it are abundant. Those remains are found in very 

 great numbers in the northern parts of Asia, and 

 especially near the shores of the Polar Sea in that 

 quarter of the world ; but they are not found to the 

 northward of the Lake of Aral, so that the central plains 

 of Asia do not appear ever to have been an elephant's 

 country ; but if we suppose, as is most probable, that 

 the two races were co-existent at some former period, 

 we must suppose that that country, which is in all 

 probability the native one of the horse and the wild 

 ass, formed a sort of natural boundary between the 

 pastures of the southern elephant of Asia and the 

 northern one. 



In Europe the remains of this elephant are not so 

 numerous as they are in Asia , but as is the case 

 there, they are confined to the northern parts ; and 

 we are not aware that any vestige of them has been 

 found to the southward of that parallel which forms 

 their southern limit in Asia, and whirh answers to 

 nearly about the middle of France. There are some 

 few of those remains in Britain, though they are not 

 so numerous there as in some places of the continent. 

 This elephant was not, like the two which are natives 

 of tropical countries, confined to the eastern continent, 

 for the bones have been met with in America, though 

 not in any place further to the southward than about 

 the parallel of the south of Spain, which, if we take 

 the two continents according to the average of their 

 present temperature, will answer to about the same 

 limit in point of heat as that which marks the 

 southern boundary of those animals in the. eastern 



