288 MAMMALIA—ELEPHANT. 
Although the elephant has a more retentive memory, and more intelli- 
gence than any other animal, he has the brain smaller than most of them ; 
he is, at the same time, a miracle of intelligence and a monster of matter; 
his body is very thick, without any suppleness; the neck is short and very 
stiff; the head small and deformed ; the ears of an excessive diameter; and 
the nose is of a still more disproportionate length ; the eyes are too small 
as well as the mouth; his legs are like massive pillars, straight and stiff 
the feet so short and so small, that he seems to have none; the skin is hard 
thick, and callous. All these deformities are remarkable, as all of them are 
exhibited on a large scale; and they are more disagreeable to the eye, as 
most of them have no other example in the creation; no other anima 
having either the head, the feet, the nose, the ears, or the tusks, made 01 
placed like those of the elephant. 
The elephant is yet singular in the conformation of the feet and the 
texture of the skin. He is not clothed with hair like other quadrupeds ; his 
skin is bare; some bristles issue out of the chops; they are very thin on the 
body, and thicker on the eyelids, on the back part of the head, within the 
ears, the thighs, and the legs. The epidermis, or outside skin, hard and 
callous, has two sorts of wrinkles, some hollow, others promment. In man, 
and other animals, the epidermis sticks every where close to the skin. In 
the ele-hant, it is only fastened by some points, like two quilted stuffs one 
above tic other. This epidermis is naturally dry, and soon acquires three 
or four lines of thickness, by the crusts which are generated one above the ~ 
other drying up. It is this thickness of the epidermis which produces the 
elephantiasis, or dry leprosy, to which man, whose skin is bare, like that of 
the elephant, is sometimes subject. This distemper is very common to 
elephants ; and, to prevent it, the Indians take care to rub them often with 
oil, and to preserve the skin supple by frequent bathing. It is rather tender 
where itis not callous ; and the elephant is so fearful of the sting of the flies. 
that he not only employs his natural motions, but even the resources of his 
intelligence, to get rid of them; he makes use of his tail, of his ears, of -his 
trunk, to strike them; he contracts his skin wherever he can, and squeezes 
them to death betwixt the wrinkles. He cleans his skin by rubbing it with 
pumice stones, and afterwards pours on it perfumed oil and colors. The 
conformation of the feet and legs is also singular, and different in the 
elephant from that of other animals; the fore legs seem to be higher than 
those behind, yet the hind legs are the longest; they are not bent like the 
hind legs of a horse or an ox, the thighs of which seem to be of the same 
piece with the buttocks; their knee is very near the belly, and the foot so 
high and so long, that it seems to make a great part of the leg. In the 
elephant, on the contrary, this part is very short, and touches the ground > 
he has the knee, like man, in the middle of the leg, not near the belly. 
This foot, so short and so small, is divided into five toes, which are all co- 
vered with a skin, none appearing outwardly ; one sees only a sort of claws 
