164 THE STORY OF THE ELEPHANT. 



Yet the elephant stood firm, although it was gored by the buffalo, which was 

 then killed by another gun. 



In case of wounds or injuries the elephant has an immense advantage over 

 all other animals, in the use of its trunk for dressing wounds. It is at once 

 a syringe, a powdering-pufif and a hand. Water, mud, and dust are the 

 main "applications" used, though it sometimes covers a sun-scorched back 

 with grass or leaves. Wounded elephants have marvelous power of recovery 

 when in their wild state, although they have no gifts of surgical knowledge, 

 their simple .system being confined to plastering their wounds with mud, or 

 blowing dust upon the surface. Dust and mud comprise the entire stock of 

 medicines of the elephant, and this is applied upon the most trivial, as well 

 as upon the most serious occasions. I have seen them when in a tank plaster 

 up a bullet wound with mud taken from the bottom. 



The African elephant is more oi a tree- feeder than the Indian, and the 

 destruction committed by a large herd of such animals when feeding in a 

 mimosa-forest is extraordinary; they deliberately march forward, and uproot 

 or break down every tree that excites their appetite. The mimosas are gen- 

 erally from sixteen to twenty feet high, and, having no tap'-root, they are 

 easily overturned by the tusks of the elephants, which are driven like cro'wbars 

 beneath the roots, and used as levers, in which rough labor they are frequently 

 broken. Upon the overthrow oi a tree, the elephants eat the roots and leaves, 

 and strip the bark from the branches by grasping them with their rough trunks. 

 Two elephants may sometimes unite their strength in order tO' overthrow a 

 tree of more than ordinary size. In South-Eastern Africa I have seen large 

 areas of sandy soil ploughed up by the tusks of these animals in their search 

 for roots. 



In digging the elephant always uses one particular tusk, which, in conse- 

 quence, is much more worn than the other. It is nearly always the right 

 tusk which is selected for this duty; and the one so" used is termed by the 

 Sudanis the hadam, or servant. 



In Southern Africa, at least, elephants drink almost every night, but only 

 rarely during the day. In that part of the continent they seek the deepest 

 shades of the forest during the heat of the day, and generally appear tO) sleep 

 in a standing posture. 



