THE ELEPHANT. 



187 



pounds. " Varf.c>ni:i.ims also saitli," to quote Topsell, " that lie saw, in tins island of Sumatra, two 

 elephaats' teeth which weighed three hundred six-aud-thirty pounds." A tusk, sold at Amsterdam, is 

 said to have writhed three hundred and fifty pounds. 



in the development of these parts the ivory is deposited by successive secretions of a vascular 

 pulp, in very thin layers from within. An elephant's tusk is well known to be hollow ; this cavity, 

 then, is the seat of the pulpy substance, in which are sometimes found musket-balls and other foreign 

 bodies. These have entered when the ivory was in its soft state, and have become firmly imbedded in 



SKKI.KTON OF THE ELEPHANT. 



the hardened tusk. How vascular this "part is, is evident from the fact, that an elephant at Exeter 

 Change nearly bled to death from the laceration of the vessels of the pulp, contained in the cavity 

 for the purpose of supplying constant internal additions of successive laminse, as the tusk is worn 

 down externally. 



The enormous tusks constitute the elephant's weapons of defence, and are, at the same time, the 

 instruments by which he upturns trees and roots. Hence the neck, unlike that of the -stag or the ginille* 



