THE ELEPHANT. 337 



the perfume. The orange-flower seems to be 

 particularly grateful both to its sense of taste and 

 smelling ; it strips the tree of all its verdure, 

 and eats every part of it, even to the branches 

 themselves. It seeks hi the meadows the most 

 odoriferous plants to feed upon, and in the woods 

 it prefers the cocoa, the banana, the palm, and 

 the sago tree, to all others. As the shoots of 

 these are tender, and filled with pith, it eats 

 not only the leaves and the fruits, but even the 

 branches, the trunk, and the whole plant to the 

 very roots. 



But it is in the sense of touching that this 

 animal excels all others of the brute creation, 

 and perhaps even man himself. The organ of 

 this sense lies wholly in the trunk, which is an 

 instrument peculiar to this animal, and that serves 

 it for all the purposes of a hand. The trunk is, 

 properly speaking, only the snout lengthened out 

 to a great extent, hollow like a pipe, and ending 

 in two openings, or nostrils, like those of a hog. 

 An elephant of fourteen feet high has the trunk 

 about eight feet long, and five feet and a half in 

 circumference at the mouth, where it is thickest. 

 It is hollow all along, but with a partition run- 

 ning from one end of it to the other ; so that 

 though outwardly it appears like a single pipe, 

 it is inwardly divided into two. This fleshy tube 

 is composed of nerves and muscles, covered with 

 a proper skin of a blackish colour, like that of 

 the rest of the body. It is capable of being 

 moved in every direction, of being lengthened 

 and shortened, of being bent or straightened, so 



VOL. in. Y 



