72 
VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
these heavy loads remained sometimes for twenty hours on the 
elephants’ backs before being removed. 
I place these facts thus prominently before you for the purpose 
of drawing your attention to the tremendous weight that is thus 
necessarily thrown on the pad of the animal’s foot, which I am 
now desirous to describe, as briefly as I can, with particulars as 
to its formation, trusting I may elicit some discussion or remarks 
on it that shall afford information to all. 
The skeleton of the foot is composed of eighteen phalanges, 
corresponding to the bones in the human fingers, articulating 
superiorly with the metacarpals, of which there are five in each 
fore limb, and inferiorly set into a bed or cushion, composed of 
soft elastic matter, interspersed and fed by innumerable blood¬ 
vessels, and kept moist by sebaceous secretion. 
This pad, as it proceeds to the surface downwards, becomes 
less vascular, and secretes another fluid peculiar to itself, its func¬ 
tion apparently being to destroy foreign bodies which enter into 
the sole of the pad. This fluid is of an oily consistence, clear 
and light in colour. 
In making a vertical section of a foot you will observe— 
Tirst, nearest the surface, that the pad has a hard horny cover¬ 
ing of an elastic nature, interspersed by many fissures or cracks, 
over the whole exterior surface of the foot. 
The second layer is of a less dense and spongy material, in which 
will often be found strong, fresh, green thorns or spikes, which 
the animal has picked up in walking, and which apparently give 
him no pain. Above this, again, is another layer of the same 
material, which gets gradually less dense as it proceeds upwards. 
Here the thorns are often found embedded in a horizontal posi¬ 
tion, having been deprived of their hard consistence. In the 
next layer upwards they lose their shape and become, to a certain 
extent, amalgamated with the pulpy consistence contained in the 
interior of the pad, giving to it a greyish appearance. 
There is evidently a fluid provided by nature for the destruc¬ 
tion of all these foreign bodies which penetrate the sole or pad, 
but how they are generally got rid of I cannot, as yet, determine, 
unless they are destroyed by this or other secretions, and after¬ 
wards rejected or cast off by some other process. 
The elephant’s foot is, perhaps, of all our other beasts of bur¬ 
den, the most delicate, sensitive, and easily injured. It is en¬ 
dowed with the power of touch to the highest degree, and, I need 
hardly add, it is, of all other members, the most important; for 
the animal might be deprived of the use of his trunk, eyesight, 
or ears, and yet be worked, but, should his feet go wrong, then 
his usefulness is at an end. 
I might hepe mention, as an illustration of this extraordinary 
