TJie Elephant. 115 
of India, he took a large Elephant which had fought very 
valiantly for the king, and naming him Ajax, dedicated 
him to the sun, and then let him loose with this inscrip- 
tion : — " Alexander, the son of Jupiter, hath dedicated 
Ajax to the sun." This Elephant was found with this 
inscription 350 years after. 
The greatest wonder the Elephant presents to the 
admiration of the intelligent observer of nature is his 
proboscis, or trunk, which attains a length of six or eight 
feet, and is so flexible that he uses it almost as dexterously 
as a man does his hand. It was erroneously said, that 
the Elephant could receive nourishment through his 
trunk ; this sort of pipe is nothing but a prolongation of 
the snout, for the. purpose of breathing, into which the 
animal can by the strength of his lungs draw up a great 
quantity of water or other liquid, which he spouts out 
again, or brings back to his mouth by inverting and 
shortening his proboscis for this purpose. 
Captain Marryat, in his very entertaining work called 
Masterman Beady, relates a curious instance of the saga- 
city of an Elephant in India, which had fallen into a 
deep tank. The tank was so deep that it was impossible 
to hoist the Elephant up, but when the people threw 
down several bundles of faggots, the sagacious animal 
laid one bundle above another, always standing on each 
tier as he arranged it, till at last he raised the pile high 
enough to allow him to walk out of the tank. But 
instances of the sagacity of this noble creature might be, 
cited ad infinitum. In the East, where they are made 
available in the service of man, they will load a boat 
with singular dexterity, carefully keeping every article 
dry, and disposing and balancing the cargo with the 
utmost precision. 
Its strength is proportionate to its bulk : it will carry 
three or four thousand pounds weight on its back, and 
upwards of a thousand pounds on its tusks. 
The African Elephant is a distinct species (E. africanus) 
readily distinguished from his Asiatic brother, by the 
enormous size of his flapping ears. He is abundant in 
the southern part of Africa and is killed annually in 
great numbers for the sake of his tusks. 
