M A M M A L I A, 



1C9 



mouth, in a manner to which there is no parallel in 

 the rest of animated nature ; and thus independently 

 of its supposed sagacity, the accounts of which have 

 been often greatly exaggerated, the elephant is, in 

 respect of mechanical structure, among the most 

 wonderful of all the mammalia. 



The foot, clumsy as it appears, comes wonderfully 

 in aid of the trunk in some of the nicer operations. 

 This foot can in no respect be compared to a hand, 

 for the toes are completely enveloped within the 

 the thick skin of the member ; and to external ap- 

 pearance there is no organ in the whole animal king- 

 dom more clumsy and ungainly than the foot of the 

 elephant. We must not, however, judge from mere 

 external appearances when we wish to ascertain what 

 an animal can perform ; for this foot of the elephant, 

 clumsy as it seems to be, and incapable as it is of 

 performing the ordinary operation of grasping, is not- 

 withstanding a very ready instrument. The animal 

 can press down a branch with it, or hold on a tuft of 

 grass to prevent its being drawn out of the ground, 

 while the trunk twists oh" the eatable part as neatly 

 as if it were cut oft' with a pair of scissors. In tame 

 elephants which have been taught to uncork a bottle 

 of water and swallow the contents, we have a beau- 

 tiful instance of the manner in which the foot and 

 the trunk work to each other. The bottle is taken 

 by the trunk in a coil near the extremity of that 

 organ, and carefully conveyed under the side of the 

 foot, where it is invariably placed in a direction 

 nearly perpendicular and with the cork uppermost. 

 The lip and finger of the trunk are then applied to 

 it ; and however small the portion of cork above the 

 neck of the bottle is, they seize it so tightly that by 

 the twisting motion of the oblique muscles they twirl 

 it out almost exactly in the same manner as would 

 be done by a cork-screw. After the cork is extracted, 

 the animal brings the bottle to an upright position, and 

 coiling the trunk round it conveys it to the mouth with- 

 out spilling a single drop. The mode in which this is 

 done is well worthy of attention, as showing how 

 very wonderful an instrument the trunk is, and how 

 much superior it is even to the human hand in the 

 universality of its motions. Generally speaking, the 

 most powerful curvature of the trunk is downwards, 

 as that seems to be the mode of its action in taking 

 the food of the animal when in a state of nature. 

 With the water bottle, however, it can have a lateral 

 motion, and so balance the bottle as that not a drop 

 is spilt until the mouth is reached, though when that 

 is arrived at, the bottle is inverted in the neatest 

 manner. It is not easy to explain, or even to under- 

 stand the singular mode of the coiling of this curious 

 instrument. It does not lay hold by a single part, and 

 so convey food to the mouth as is done by the hands 

 or paws of those animals which use these instruments 

 in feeding ; for the elephant can advance the coil on 

 the trunk, and keeping firm hold of a bundle of grass 

 or any other substance which it wishes to convey to 

 the mouth, it can roll it upwards in the coil, while the 

 lip and finger of the trunk are kept ready for seizing 

 some new object. 



It would be utterly impossible for any organ com- 

 posed of jointed bones to perform any thing like the 

 number of motions of which the trunk of the elephant 

 is capable. Generally speaking, all articulated organs 

 have one principal plane of motion, and out of this 

 piano they move feebly and unstably. The only 

 way indeed that free motion of bones in all directions 



can be produced is by ball and socket joints, and 

 these joints never can have a steady motion in any 

 one direction, unless that in which antagonist muscles 

 of nearly equal power are applied to them. There can- 

 not be many pairs of such muscles applied to any one 

 joint, and this is the reason why, in the knee and 

 elbow joints, the oblique or rolling motions are effected 

 by the application of a second bone, the action of 

 which turns the joint round upon the centre of the 

 principal one. The spines of the cartilaginous fishes 

 make a slight approach to the trunk of the elephant, 

 but even in them it is only a slight one, for the bone 

 though flexible, is still much stiffer than cartilage, 

 and besides it has the disadvantage of being internal 

 or central of the muscles which move it, and thus 

 those muscles have to act at the greatest disadvan- 

 tage. The trunk of the elephant, on the other hand, 

 has a structure resembling that of the invertebrated 

 animals in which the muscles are inserted on the 

 skin or crust, and thus act directly and to their full 

 extent, without any loss of power. 



It is not a little singular that, in the largest and we 

 may add the rarest of the mammalia, and one which 

 possesses so much intelligence and resource as are 

 found in the elephant, we should, in its most im- 

 portant organ, have a complete departure from the 

 ordinary mode of organisation among mammalia, and 

 the part be as it were, thrown among what we are 

 accustomed to consider inferior classes of animals. 

 The mollusca and the annelids: are the animals which 

 in their structure come nearest to the trunk of the 

 elephant ; and when we examine the extensions and 

 contractions and the various flexures of a worm or a 

 leech, or of a slug, which are all produced by internal 

 muscular effort without the assistance of any bones, 

 we have before us no bad type of the action of the 

 elephant's trunk. It is well known that a common earth 

 worm can bore its way by muscular exertion alone, 

 where the strength of none of the mammalia could 

 enable them to follow it ; and it is equally well 

 known that no aperture is too small or too sinuous 

 for preventing the passage of some of the leeches, 

 especially of those ground-leeches which inhabit the 

 eastern Archipelago in myriads, and are such torments 

 to the inhabitants during the rainy season by crawling 

 up their legs and sucking their blood at every pore. 

 But these are motions of the whole animal, and not 

 the working of a part ; and even in their particular 

 motions they are excelled by the trunk of the ele- 

 phant. In their muscular action, whether it consists 

 in extension, in contraction, or in flexure, the muscle 

 passes fairly from side to side, through the centre of 

 the body. The two tubes by which the trunk of the 

 elephant is perforated, give it an advantage over all 

 animals, or parts of animals which have the muscles 

 extending the whole way from side to side. The 

 internal sheath of the tubes, and the external covering 

 of the organ, afford (as there are two tubes), nearly 

 three times as much insertion for muscular fibres as 

 there is in an animal which has its muscles extending 

 from the covering on the one side to the covering on 

 the other ; and while both the external and internal 

 coverings of the trunk are endowed with a very high 

 degree of sensibility, both of them are joint all over, 

 and one cannot help feeling admiration at the few 

 words in which the inimitable Bard so perfectly cha- 

 racterises the elephant when he simply says, that it 

 " Twines its lithe proboscis." 



It is true that the most powerful action of the 



