164 
THE STORY OF THE ELEPHANT . 
Yet the elephant stood firm, although it was gored by the buffalo, which was 
then killed by another gun. 
In case of wounds or injuries the elephant has an immense advantage over 
all other animals, in the use of its trunk for dressing wounds. It is at once 
a syringe, a powdering-puff and a hand. Water, mud, and dust are the 
main “applications” used, though it sometimes covers a sun-scorched back 
with grass or leaves. Wounded elephants have marvelous power of recovery 
when in their wild state, although they have no gifts of surgical knowledge, 
their simple system being confined to plastering their wounds with mud, or 
blowing dust upon the surface. Dust and mud comprise the entire stock of 
medicines of the elephant, and this is applied upon the most trivial, as well 
as upon the most serious occasions. I have seen them when in a tank plaster 
up a bullet wound with mud taken from the bottom. 
The African elephant is more of a tree-feeder than the Indian, and the 
destruction committed by a large herd of such animals when feeding in a 
mimosa-forest is extraordinary; they deliberately march forward, and uproot 
or break down every tree that excites their appetite. The mimosas are gen¬ 
erally from sixteen to twenty feet high, and, having no tap'-root, they are 
easily overturned by the tusks of the elephants, which are driven like crowbars 
beneath the roots, and used as levers, in which rough labor they are frequently 
broken. Upon the overthrow of a tree, the elephants eat the roots and leaves, 
and strip the bark from the branches by grasping them with their rough trunks. 
Two elephants may sometimes unite their strength in order to> overthrow a 
tree of more than ordinary size. In South-Eastern Africa I have seen large 
areas of sandy soil ploughed up by the tusks of these animals in their search 
for roots. 
In digging the elephant always uses one particular tusk, which, in conse¬ 
quence, is much more worn than the other. It is nearly always the right 
tusk which is selected for this duty; and the one so used is termed by the 
Sudanis the hadam, or servant. 
In Southern Africa, at least, elephants drink almost every night, but only 
rarely during the day. In that part of the continent they seek the deepest 
shades of the forest during the heat of the day, and generally appear to sleep 
in a standing posture. 
