CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 53 



That of the Indian elephant has a sort of 

 finger at the tip, and there are two of these 

 " fingers" in the trunk of the African kind. 

 With the help of the finger, the Indian elephant 

 is able to pick up all but the smallest articles 

 off the ground, and those still smaller, such 

 as grains of maize, are simply sucked into the 

 trunk. So that the trunk is not merely a nose 

 and an arm, but also a natural vacuum-cleaner, 

 which takes trifles off the ground much as the 

 cleaner going over a dusty drugget. Nature 

 turns out curious noses, particularly in the 

 birds, which, so to speak, have their nose and 

 mouth in one, as well as in some of the fishes, 

 which also combine the two, but I doubt 

 whether there is such another combination tool 

 as the elephant's trunk. It even serves as a 

 powerful weapon now and then, for, though 

 they do not commonly put this sensitive organ 

 to such violent uses, elephants have been 

 known, as will be shown in an anecdote on a 

 later page, to seize men in their trunk and to 

 fling them to the ground. At the same time, 

 some of the artists who flourished in the simple 

 days when cameras had not yet recorded the 

 facts used to allow their imagination to run 

 away with them, and represented infuriated 

 elephants flinging hapless men about like so 

 many golf balls. That is what elephants do 

 only in books. Indeed, the trunk is usually 



