ELEPHANT. 
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tention ; it picks tliem up one by one, unites them 
into a nosegay, and seems charmed with the per- 
fume. The orange-flower seems to be particularly 
grateful both to its sense of taste and smelling ; it 
strips the tree of all its verdure, and eats every 
part of it, even to the branches themselves. It 
seeks in the meadows the most odoriferous plants 
to feed upon ; and in the woods it prefers the cocoa , 
the banana, the palm, and the saga tree, to all 
others. As the shoots of these are tender and filled 
with pith ; it eats not only the leaves and the 
fruits, hut even the branches, the trunk, and the 
whole plant to the very roots. 
But it is in the sense of touching that this ani- 
mal excels all others of the brute creation, and 
perhaps even man himself. The organ of this 
sense lies wholly in the trunk, which is an instru- 
ment peculiar to this animal, and that serves it 
for all the purposes of a hand. The trunk is y 
properly speaking, only the snout lengthened out 
to a great extent, hollow like a pipe, and ending 
in two openings, or nostrils, like those of a hog. 
An elephant of fourteen feet high has the trunk 
about eight feet long, and five feet and a half in 
circumference at the mouth, where it is thickest. 
It is hollow all along, but with a partition running 
from one end of it to the other ; so that though out- 
wardly it appears like a single pipe, it is inwardly 
divided into two. This fleshy tube is composed 
of nerves and muscles, covered with a proper skin 
of a blackish colour, like that of the rest of the 
body. It is capable of being moved in every 
direction, of being lengthened and shortened, of 
being bent or straightened, so pliant as to embrace 
any body it is applied to, and yet so strong that 
nothing can be torn from the gripe. To aid the 
force of this gripe, there are several little emi- 
nences, like a caterpillar’s feet, on the underside 
