OF LIVING ELEPHANTS » 2ll 



the entire life, the age influences their dimensions more than any 

 thing else. 



The elephant of Africa has, at least in certain countries, large tusks 

 in the two sexes. The African female, seventeen years old, which 

 lived in the menagerie of Louis XIV., and whose skeleton we still 

 possess, made by Duverney, has them larger than any Indian elephant 

 male or female of the same size with which we are acquainted. 



It is in Africa that we find most ivory, the largest tusks, and those 

 of which the ivory is hardest, and preserves its whiteness best. Cos- 

 mas already remarked this, as we have seen. 



There occurs, to be sure, in Sparmann*, a passage where it is said 

 that at the Cape female elephants are known by the smallness of their 

 tusks ; but this expression is a little vague, and does not import pre- 

 cisely such a smallness, as that they would nearly not appear at all, as 

 in the females of the Indian species. 



In the Indian species there are several varieties which M. Corse has 

 developed with more care than any other individual!. 



First, no female there wears long tusks ; they have them all small, 

 and directed in a right line downwards (as AristotleJ has well ex- 

 pressed it in a passage since improperly contradicted), and some of 

 these females have them so short, that one must raise the lips in order 

 to see them. 



Still more, all the males are very far from having them large. Ta- 

 vernier says that in the isle of Ceylon it is only the first born of each 

 female that has them so§. On the continent of India are distin- 

 guished the dauntelah, or elephants with long tusks ; the mooknaSy 

 which have them very short ; the latter always has them straight. 

 Wolfs, who lived a considerable time in Ceylon, also says that in this 

 island there are many males without tusks, and that they are there 

 called majanis.W 



Among the dauntelah, there are again distinguished, according to 

 Corse, the pullung dauntelah, whose tusks are directed almost horizon- 

 tally, and the puttel dauntelah, where they are directed straight down 

 wards. Between these two extremes there are several intermediate 

 kinds, and names have also been given to the individuals, one of whose 

 tusks diflfers from the other, and who may have only one. But all 

 these varieties have nothing constant, and are all blended up, the one 

 with the other ; they are found together in the same herds. 



The differences in direction are even owing oftentimes to accidental 

 circumstances ; to the manner in which the individual is wont to use 

 his tusks, or to rest on the one rather than on the other ; we have had 

 proofs of it in the elephants of our own menagerie. 



In Bengal, according to M. Corse, the tusks scarcely exceed 72 

 livres in weight, and they do not exceed 50 in the province of Tipe- 

 rah, which produces the best elephants. However, in London they 

 have tusks, probably originally from Pegu, which weigh 150 livres. 

 It is in fact from Pegu and from China that the largest elephants 



* Voyage to the Cape, &c. t Phil. Trans. 1799. 



+ Hist. Anim. lib. ii. § Tavernier, torn. 11, p. 175. 



II Voyage to Ceylon, in German, p. 106, quoted by Camper, Anat. of an Elephant. 



