INTERIOR OF AFRICA. 307 
material, and are convinced that the ivory thus manufactured, 
was originally parts of a tooth, they are not satisfied. They 
suspect that this commodity is more frequently converted in 
Europe, to purposes of far greater importance ; the true na- 
ture of which is studiously concealed from them, lest the price 
of ivory should be enhanced. They cannot, they say, easily 
persuade themselves, that ships would be built, and voyages 
undertaken, to procure an article, which had no other value 
than that of furnishing handles to knives, &c. when pieces of 
wood would answer the purpose equally well. 
Elephants are very numerous in the interior of Africa, but they 
appear to be a distinct species from those found in Asia. Blu- 
menbach, in his figures of objects of natural history, has given 
good drawings of a grinder of each ; and the variation is evident. 
M. Cuvier also has given, in the Magazin Encyclopedique, a 
clear account of the difference between them. As I never 
examined the Asiatic elephant, I have chosen rather to refer to 
those writers, than advance this as an opinion of my own. It 
has been said, that the African elephant is of a less docile 
nature than the Asiatic, and incapable of being tamed. The 
Negroes certainly do not at present tame them ; but when we 
consider that the Carthaginians had always tame elephants in 
their armies, and actually transported some of them to Italy in 
the course of the Punic wars ; it seems more likely that they 
should have possessed the art of taming their own elephants, 
than have submitted to the expence of bringing such vast ani- 
mals from Asia. Perhaps, the barbarous practice of hunting 
the African elephants for the sake of their teeth, has rendered 
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