86 
MAMMALIA. 
[Chap. II. 
which such comparatively puny creatures entertain of 
one so powerful and yet so gentle. 
Amongst elephants themselves, jealousy and other 
causes of irritation frequently occasion contentions 
between individuals of the same herd ; but on such oc- 
casions it is their habit to strike with their trunks, and 
to bear down their opponents with their heads. It is 
doubtless correct that an elephant, when prostrated by 
the force and fury of an antagonist of its own species, is 
often wounded by the downward pressure of the tusks, 
which in any other position it would be almost impos- 
sible to use offensively. 1 
Mr. Mercer, who in 1846 was the principal civil 
officer of Grovernment at Badulla, sent me a jagged 
fragment of an elephant's tusk, about five inches in 
diameter, and weighing between twenty and thirty 
pounds, which had been brought to him by some natives, 
who, being attracted by a noise in the jungle, witnessed 
a combat between a tusker and one without tusks, and 
saw the latter with his trunk seize one of the tusks of 
his antagonist and wrench from it the portion in ques- 
tion, which measured two feet in length. 
Here the trunk was shown to be the more powerful 
offensive weapon of the two ; but I apprehend that the 
chief reliance of the elephant for defence is on its pon- 
derous weight, the pressure of its foot being sufficient 
to crush any minor assailant after being prostrated by 
means of its trunk. Besides, in using its feet for this 
purpose, it derives a wonderful facility from the peculiar 
formation of the knee-joint in the hind leg, which, en- 
1 A writer in the India Sporting 
Review for October 1857 says a 
male elephant was killed by two 
others close to his camp: "the 
head was completely smashed in; 
there was a large hole in the side, 
and the abdomen was ripped open. 
The latter wound was given pro- 
bably after it had fallen." — P. 
175. 
