168 THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
grasp with the utmost firmness, for its strength is fully 
equal to its flexibility, whatever it may seize; and it is 
by this means that the Elephant conveys his food to his 
mouth. Being purely herbivorous, but encumbered with 
a head and appendages so weighty as to require all the 
support to be derived from an excessively short and 
almost unyielding neck, it would be utterly impossible 
for him to browse upon the herbage from which his 
sustenance is chiefly derived, and he would consequently 
run no small risk of absolute starvation, were it not for 
this admirable provision, by means of which he collects 
and enfolds his food, and conveys it to his mouth with 
as much ease and precision as a Monkey would execute 
the same motions with his hands. In drinking too the 
trunk offers the same facilities and performs the same 
useful and necessary office. Placing its extremity in the 
fluid which he is about to drink, the Elephant pumps 
up, or rather inhales, a sufficient quantity to fill its 
cavities, and then transferring it to his mouth pours its 
contents quietly down his throat. When his thirst is 
satisfied he will frequently continue the same process of 
filling his trunk for the purpose of discharging the liquid 
contained in it over his body, an indulgence in which he 
appears to take no little pleasure; and will even some- 
times amuse himself by directing the fluid to other 
objects. 
The Asiatic Elephant was until very lately considered 
as forming one species with the African, the clear and 
obvious distinctions which exist between them never 
having been noticed until pointed out by M. Cuvier, 
notwithstanding that both have been. familiarly known 
for more than two thousand years to the nations of 
