ELEPHANT, | NATURAL HISTORY. 103 
ELEPHANTS cannot bend their legs and thighs except in 
youth. Its inside is like a pig’s inside, and therefore like 
a man’s. It has no joints in its legs. 
Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii. ch. lv. 
[Sir Thomas Browne (“Vulgar Errors,” bk. iii. ch. i.) adduces 
sundry grave arguments to prove that an Elephant has joints :] 
WHILE men conceive they never lie down, and enjoy 
not the position of rest ordained unto all pedestrious 
animals, hereby they imagine (what reason cannot conceive) 
that an animal of the vastest dimension and longest dura- 
tion, should live in a continual motion, without that alternity 
and vicissitude of rest whereby all others continue. 
“Vulgar Errors,” bk. iii. ch. i. 
In the woods or fields where they [Indians or Africans] 
suspect [Elephants] teeth to be buried, they bring forth 
pots or bottles of water, and disperse them, here one, 
there another, and so let them stand, and tarry to watch 
them,—so one sleepeth, another singeth, or bestoweth his 
time as he pleaseth; after a little time they go and look 
in their pots, and if the teeth lie near their bottles, by an 
unspeakable and secret attractive power in nature, they draw 
all the water out of them that are near them, which the 
watchman taketh for a sure sign, and so diggeth about his 
bottle, till he find the tooth. [Topsell decides after argu- 
ment that tusks are not horns.]| The trunk hath two 
passages,—one into the head and bedy by which he 
-breatheth, and the other into his mouth. It is false that 
they have no joints or articles in their legs, They drink 
not wine, except in war, when they are to fight, but water 
at all times, whereof they will not taste, except it be muddy 
and not clear, for they avoid clear water, loathing to see 
their own shadow therein. In the summer-time they choose 
out and gather the sweetest flowers, and being led into 
their stables, they will not eat meat until they take of their 
flowers, and dress the brims of their mangers therewith, 
pleasing themselves with their meat, because of the savour 
of the flowers stuck about their cratch, like dainty - fed 
persons which set their dishes with green herbs, and put 
them into their cups of wine. They are never so fierce, 
violent, or wild, but the sight of a ram tameth and dis- 
