THE GREAT THICK-SKINNED ANIMALS 
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leaves, and so on, are picked up by the little finger and thumb-like 
projections about which I told you, while larger objects are grasped 
by the trunk itself. I dare say that you have seen an elephant pick 
up and eat a biscuit; and, if so, you will very well remember the man¬ 
ner in which the trunk carried food to the mouth. 
So useful, indeed, is the trunk, that if deprived of its aid, even 
for a few days only, the elephant would certainly die. His neck is 
so short that he could obtain neither food or drink, for he could not 
bend his head to the ground and so procure water, while his long 
tusks would prevent him from even plucking the leaves which might 
grow within his reach. 
I dare say you will wonder why it is that the neck should be so 
short and stout. The fact is, that the head, with the teeth and the 
enormous tusks, is so immensely heavy, that the neck must be very 
large in order to contain the powerful muscles which are needed to 
sustain it. This accounts for its great size, and we may also see with 
equal ease, the reason for its shortness by trying a single experiment. 
Mud-Bathers—Elephants. —Nearly every tropical animal, 
including the tiger, bathes either in water or in mud. Perhaps the 
best-known mud-bathers are the wild boar, the water-buffalo, and the 
elephant. The latter 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,” writes 
an African explorer, “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 
pharmacopoeia 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.” 
How an Elephant Pays Back. —A tame elephant, kept by an 
officer in India, was suffered to go at large. The animal used to walk 
about the streets in as quiet and familiar a manner as any of the 
