The elephant is the largest living land animal; and, though numerous forms existed in early geological times, it is represented to-day by two species only,—the African elephant, Elephas Africanus, and the Asiatic elephant, Elephas Indicus. The geographical range of the former originally included nearly all Africa, but now the animals are more closely confined to the central interior regions. The Asiatic elephant is found in the forests of India, Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Cochin China, Sumatra, and the Malay peninsula; and, while the introduction of railroads into these countries in ensuing years will perhaps result in its extinction, at present its numbers are not growing less. The African elephant differs from its Asiatic cousin in several particulars. The apparent distinguishing features are the tusks that attain a much greater development and occur in both sexes, while in the Asiatic species the males alone possess them. The African elephant is at least a foot higher than the Asiatic, attaining a maximum height of eleven feet. Its ears are extremely large, covering the shoulder, and in some instances measuring three and a half feet in length by two and a half feet in width, while those of its Indian relative are comparatively small.

When Jumbo—who was an African elephant—and one of the Asiatic elephants stood side by side, the difference was very marked. The summit of the head of the Indian species forms a pyramid, while the front, or forehead, is concave. In Jumbo the front of the head was somewhat convex, the eye was larger; and when we compare the feet, we find that while the African elephant has, as a rule, four nails on each foot, the Asiatic has four on each hind-foot, and five on each fore-foot. The number of nails often varies with individuals. The Indian natives esteem those animals most which possess five on each fore-foot, and four on each hind-foot, or eighteen, odd numbers being considered unlucky. The author of “Oriental Field Sports” says that he has observed elephants with fifteen nails, which no native would purchase; and he heard of one with twenty, and saw one with eighteen. These differences are external, as all elephants possess five toes upon each foot internally. The two species also differ as to their teeth. The incisor teeth of elephants are greatly developed, forming the tusks, and only occur in the upper jaw of living forms. They often attain enormous size, weighing from one hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds. The tusks of the Asiatic elephants born in this country were visible at birth. Concerning them in general, Sanderson states that they are not renewed, but are permanent; his information being based upon the personal observations of many years. Corse, who made observations in the last century, and published them in the “Philosophical Transactions,” 1799, states that the elephants observed by him had milk, or deciduous tusks as well as permanent ones; that the milk-tusks appeared at about six months of age and fell out between the first and second years. He found in the young skull the place of the capsule of the permanent tusks, which appear a couple of months after the loss of the milk-tusks. Huxley says, “In recent elephants, only the two incisors are preceded by milk-teeth;” and this may be the generally accepted belief. The tusks have no roots like the teeth of some animals, but fit firmly into what are called premaxillary sockets: and if we should examine this buried or hidden portion, we should find that it was partly hollow, so to speak; the ivory at the root being very thin, and surrounding a pulp where the ivory is being secreted. The length of this soft pulp varies according to the age of the animal: thus, in young elephants, only a small portion of the tusk outside of the gum is solid ivory; all the rest being hollow, or containing the pulp. As the animal grows, this cavity decreases in length, until in extremely old elephants it disappears entirely and the tusk is solid ivory.

In the left tusk of the elephant shot by Sir Victor Brooke ([p. 115]), the pulp-cavity was wholly obliterated, its place occupied by an exceedingly dense nodular dentine. This tusk was diseased. In the right tusk of the same animal the pulp-hollow extended from the base through half the imbedded portion, or thirteen and a half inches. In a pair of tusks owned by Col. Douglas Hamilton, of the British army, the pulp-cavity occupies ten inches and a half of the imbedded length. From this it is evident that the length of a tusk cannot be accurately determined from mere observation, as in a large elephant the sockets are from one foot six inches to one foot nine inches in length; so that an animal might have a tusk three feet and a half long, and show only one foot and a half of it, the gum alone concealing about four inches.

As the ivory is so soft at the base of the tusk, it is evident that it can be easily broken; and, if a bullet or spear strikes this spot, it becomes embedded, and eventually incorporated, in the tusk. Workers in ivory are often surprised to find a leaden bullet in the solid ivory. In a collection in London, there is a section of a tusk which was cut at a piano-forte manufactory in 1805, which has a wrought-iron musket-ball firmly embedded in it; and other instances can be seen in the museum of the London University.

PLATE I.

In their growth, tusks often assume strange shapes, being liable to twist, just as the horns of a cow. Livingstone saw an elephant with three tusks, the third one growing out between the other two. The tusks frequently grow straight; some twist in a spiral, others form a complete circle; and many elephants have only one from birth,—like the fictitious unicorn. These animals are called Gunésh by the natives. The name is that of the Hindoo god of wisdom; and, if the single tusk of the Gunésh is the right one, the animal is reverenced. Some dimensions of tusks will be given in the chapter on Ivory. Perhaps the largest was one sold in Amsterdam some years ago. It weighed, according to Kolokner, three hundred and fifty pounds. Eden measured several nine feet in length, and one described by Hartenfels exceeded fourteen feet. There is one in the museum of Natural History, Paris, seven feet in length. The uses to which the large incisors are put, are often exaggerated. The African elephant employs its tusks to uproot small mimosa-trees, but they are never used to overthrow as large objects as is often stated. Sir Samuel Baker measured mimosa-trees four feet six inches in circumference, and thirty feet high, which elephants had pulled down; and the damage they cause in a mimosa-forest is almost incredible. These trees, however, have no tap-root, and are comparatively easy to overthrow. Gumming says, “I have repeatedly ridden through forests where the trees thus broken down lay so thick across one another that it was almost impossible to ride through the district.” The female elephant uses her tusks to scrape the barks from trees; but the large tusks of the males are designed as a defence,—the elephant with the finest tusks ruling the herd,—and terrific wounds are made by them. The elephant Conqueror, in this country, was killed by being gored in this way; and in India, when it is necessary at the government corral to subdue a mad elephant, a reliable tusker is provided with steel tusks, or glavies, which fit over the stumps of the others, and with these they do terrible work.

If we examine the skull of the elephant, we find only two molar teeth on each side of each jaw,—eight in all; and no more, as a rule, are seen at one time, twenty-four in all appearing during the lifetime of an elephant.

The teeth appear in a curious way, moving gradually forward from behind in regular succession; each old front tooth as it is worn away being pushed out of place by its successor. This wonderful provision is necessary, as the front teeth are worn away by the sand and gritty substances taken in with the food. The molar, or grinding, teeth are extremely heavy and large, and are nearly buried in the socket, the upper portion only showing. They are made up of a number of transverse perpendicular plates composed of a mass of dentine incased in an outside layer of enamel, which is in turn covered by a layer of cement that fills the spaces between the plates, and seems to bind the whole together. Each of the enamel plates, though appearing separate at the surface, is connected with the others at the base. The difference between the teeth of the Indian and African species is shown in [Plate I.] In the Indian elephant the ridges of enamel are narrower, more undulating, and appear in greater numbers than in the African species, in which the ridges are less parallel, and enclose lozenge-shaped spaces. There are certain other differences in the species, such as the number of bones in the vertebral column, or “backbone;” those of the African elephant numbering from twenty to twenty-one, and those of the Indian elephant nineteen to twenty. In examining the skull of an elephant, we are struck with its enormous size, and the comparatively small space taken up by the brain. The skull is not so heavy as it appears, the interior being divided off into partitions, or air-cells; so that, while there is a large surface for the attachment of the trunk-muscles, the head is massive, but not heavy. The neck of the elephant is so short, that, without some special provision, it could not feed from the ground; and this is seen in the trunk, or proboscis, that is a prolongation of the upper lip and nose, sometimes seven feet in length. It commences at the nasal opening of the face, contains a pair of tubes closed by a valvular arrangement, and at its end on the upper side is a small prolongation like a finger, opposite which is a prominence, or tubercle, that acts as a thumb. The trunk is made up of a vast number of muscles, estimated by Cuvier at about forty thousand. Upon the outside, the trunk appears to be ringed; and it is a most remarkable organ, combining the offices of a hand and nose, and exercising taste, touch, suction, expulsion, and prehension. With it the elephant lifts its driver, pulls over small trees, reaches for its food, takes in water which is in turn expelled into the mouth, squirts water or sand over its body; in fact, there is hardly any thing, from drawing a cork from a bottle, to hurling a tiger into the air, that this wonderful trunk cannot do for its owner. Without it the elephant would starve. One in India which had lost its trunk, had to be fed by having food placed in its mouth. Though the trunk is so useful, it is a very tender and delicate organ, and is not used in the rough manner generally supposed. In making an attack, it is raised high in air out of the way. When a great weight is lifted, it is not the trunk, but the tusks, which are employed, the former only holding the object upon the latter.