TUSKS ARE NEVER SHED OR RENEWED. 67 



In Ceylon a male elephant with tusks is a rara avis : Sir Samuel Baker 

 says that not more than one in 300 is provided with them. Out of 140 

 elephants, of which 5 1 were males, which I captured in Mysore and Bengal 

 in 1874-76, only 5 were mucknas. 



It is difficult to imagine what can cause the vital difference of tusks 

 and no tusks between the male elephant of continental India and Ceylon. 

 The climate may be said to be the same, as also their food ; and I have not 

 seen any theory advanced that seems at all well founded to account for their 

 absence in the Ceylon elephant. There is a somewhat similar case in the 

 common antelope {Antilope hezoartica) of Southern India's having inferior 

 horns to those of Central India, an 18-inch black buck being a decided 

 rarity in Mysore, and 14 inches being the average, whilst in other parts 

 of India they attain to 26 or 27 inches. Sambur {Biisa Aristotdis) in the 

 Chittagong and other forests to the east of the Bay of Bengal have inferior 

 horns to those of the Neilgherries and other parts of India. 



Elephants occasionally lose one tusk, sometimes both, in accidents in 

 the jungle, and some have only one tusk from birth. The latter are known 

 as " Gundsh " (the name of the Hindoo god of wisdom) by Hindoos, and are 

 reverenced by them if the tusk retained be the right-hand one. 



The tusks of the male elephant-calf show almost from birth. I believe 

 that they are never renewed, and that the first tusks are permanent. In 

 many works on the elephant it is stated that the first tusks are shed before 

 the second year, but I believe this to be an error — one that has gained 

 ground through so many writers deriving their information from a common 

 source, I have made this a point of particular inquiry amongst experienced 

 elephant -attendants, and have found them unanimous in dissenting from 

 the idea of any such process of renewal. It is impossible that such an im- 

 portant matter could have ( scaped their notice (natives are keen observers), 

 and I apprehend that the error — as it undoubtedly is — has arisen through 

 some savant's diagnosis of the elephant's dentition, based on analogy, or the 

 confounding the teeth and the tusks, as the same word is used to denote 

 either in several native languages. Jerdon has given his support to the 

 statement as far as adopting it goes, but this is a case in which a deserv- 

 edly trusted writer could hardly have had the information from his own 

 observation. I have had many young elephants in my charge, and never 

 noticed anything of the change alluded to. 



The Indian female elephant is always born with U(slics or short down- 

 ward prongs in the upper jaw, rarely more than four inches in length out of 

 the gum : these, wliilst present, are used for stripping bark off trees, &c.; but 

 they are seldom retained long, being generally broken off early in life, and 



