THE ELEPHANT. 341 



inconvenient and cumbersome to the last degree. 

 An account of the uses to which these teeth are 

 applied, and the manner of choosing the best 

 ivory, belongs rather to a history of the arts than 

 of nature. 



This animal is equally singular in other parts of 

 its conformation : the lips and the tongue in other 

 creatures serve to suck up and direct their drink 

 or their food ; but in the elephant they are total- 

 ly inconvenient for such purposes j and it not 

 only gathers its food with its trunk, but supplies 

 itself with water by the same means. When it 

 eats hay, as I have seen it frequently, it takes up 

 a small wisp of it with the trunk, turns and 

 shapes it with that instrument for some time, and 

 then directs it into the mouth, where it is chewed 

 by the great grinding teeth, that are large in pro- 

 portion to the bulk of the animal. This packet, 

 when chewed, is swallowed, and never ruminated 

 again, as in cows or sheep, the stomach and in- 

 testines of this creature more resembling those 

 of a horse. Its manner of drinking is equally 

 extraordinary. For this purpose, the elephant 

 dips the end of its trunk into the water, and 

 sucks up just as much as fills that great fleshy 

 tube completely. It then lifts up its head with 

 the trunk full, and turning the point into its 

 mouth, as if it intended to swallow trunk and all, 

 it drives the point below the opening of the wind- 

 pipe. The trunk being in this position, and still 

 full of water, the elephant then blows strongly 

 into it at the other end, which forces \he water it 

 contains into the throat ; down which it is heard 



