THE INDIAN ELEPHANT. 



Persons judging merely from the vertical prominence of the 

 elephant's skull, which arises from a peculiar conformation, 

 and not from cerebral development, have supposed that the 

 elephant possesses a very large brain ; and they have been 

 further induced to form this conclusion, by the popular error 

 of regarding the animal's vast capabilities as evidences of vast 

 sagacity. In the elephant, however, the brain is perhaps smaller 

 in comparison to bodily bulk than in any other wild animal ; 

 for the weight of its brain compared to that of its body, is as 

 1 to 500. The tusks, which are used as weapons of defence, 

 are much larger in the male than the female. Those of the 

 Bengal elephants rarely weigh more than seventy pounds each, 

 though tusks weighing one hundred and fifty pounds each have 

 been received at the India House. The largest on record was 

 one sold at Amsterdam, and which, according to Klokner, 

 weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. Several tusks measured 

 by Eden were nine feet long j and one described by Hartenfels 

 in his Elephantographia, exceeded fourteen feet. 



The trunk or proboscis of the elephant, though without bone 

 or cartilage, is a highly powerful organ, as may readily be 

 imagined, from the fact that Cuvier ascertained that it consists 

 of nearly 40,000 muscles. Its uses are many, as it serves for 

 respiration, for his very acute sense of smell, for gathering his 

 food, and for drawing up water, and ejecting it thence into the 

 mouth or over the body. At the end is an extremely flexible 

 appendage which acts as a finger, and opposed to which is a 

 sort of thumb, and by the aid of these instruments he can untie 

 a knot, undo a buckle, pick up a pin or a sixpence, pull the 

 cork out of a bottle, and perform various other feats. Cicero 

 calls the trunk " the elephant's hand j" Lucretius, still more 

 expressively, calls it anguimanus or snake-hand - } and the Caffre, 

 borrowing from neither poets nor orators, but naturally im- 

 pressed with admiration of its remarkable powers, approaches 

 the trunk of the slain elephant with reverence, and, having 

 cut it off, solemnly inters it, repeatedly exclaiming, " The 

 elephant is a great lord, and the trunk is his hand !" 



