Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1860-02-29

deal about them, and yet the most careful
reading and the amplest observation only
assure doubt as to the meaning of one o
their most evident features. Why have
, they tusks? Nobody really knows. A
civilized man Touches ivory every day o.
his life. The annual importation of ivory
into Great Britain is one million of pounds
and the average weight of a tusk being
about sixty pounds, eight or nine thousand
elephants are slaughtered every year to sup
ply Britain alone with the ivory used in hel
arts and manufactures Very little of thi:
comes from Ceylon, because in CeylOn on
" one elephant in hundred, and that al
ways male, has tusks. From his tusks,
part Of the ivory goes to China, and the
finest specimens are eagerly collected by
the Buddhist priests upon the spot, for or
nament of private dwellings and of tem-
pies Had the CeylOn elephants been
tus.ed as they are in Africa and India,
they would, by this time, have been extir-
pated In Africa, both sexes of elephants
have tusks, and so they have in India; al
though there, the tusks of females are much
smaller than those of the males. All the
untusked elephants of Ceylon have 'tushes,
about foot long and an inch or two in
thickness, which they use in swapping off
small branches and climbing plants There
is reason for these differences; but what
is it?
Some say that in CeylOn there is plenty
of water, but that the elephants in Africa
need some natural implements for digging
wells The tusk that, where it exists, nev-
er grows beyond weight of sixty pounds
in CeylOn. sometimes attains in Africa to
the weight of one hundred and fifty, two
hundred. or even, according to the state
ment of Mr.. BrOderip, in his Geological
Recreations, three hundred and fifty pounds
But if the elephant has tusks to dig with,
why is the female elephant denied equal pro-
visions with the male?
Again, it is said that the tusks of theele-
plant are weapons. But their position is
almost vertical, under head not easily
raised above the level of the shoulder 1t
is only by accident that an efectual blow
could be dealt with them. The chances are
/ In favor of a man, even when he has fallen
underneath an elephant enraged against
him, so little is the harmless creature apt
for war. In his forest he is without enc
mics His food abounds, and his pursuits
bring him into conflict with one living crea-
ture only. and that is the fly. Except the
fly, an elephant has no antagonist among
irrational being. In Ceylon, where there
is population of million and half
where elephants abound and are much wor-
ried by hunters, three fatal accidents in a
year is the average loss of human lif to be
set down to their account, If an elepant
does get an enemy between his feet, he
trusts to crush him by his weight, and has
power of tossing the body from foot to
foot, that he may stamp upon it with each
foot in turn. Two Ceylon elephants, one
of them tusher, were once seen in combat
in the forest. The elephant without tusks
wound his trunk about one of the tusks of
his antagonist and snapped from it a frag
ment two feet long The trunk was stron.
ger than the tusk as an offensive weapon.
Again, the state elephants, who were trained
as executioners by former kings of Handy,
held the criminal under one foot while they
plueked off his limbs by sudden movements
of the trunk. Use of the tushs never oc-
CURED to them.
A physiolOgist writing upon the apPen-
dages Of animals; regards elephants tusks
as "a species of safety-valve of the animal
economy the necessity for which arises
from the remarkable development of the
prOboscis and the Predominance of the SEN
ses of touch and SMELL 1t is observed
that the tusked elephant is able to rip open
the stem of the jaggery palms and young
palmyras to extract the mealy core, and
can split with them the juicy shaft of the
plantain, which the tuskless elephant crush
es under its foot. thereby sOiling it and
losing part of its juice.
In the service of man, elephants learn
new use for these appen lagos, in moving
stones and piling timber. Once, when RI
ding in the thick jungle near Handy, Sir
Emerson found his horse to be xcited by
repeated 'Urmph, urmph,' uttered in
hoarse, dissatisfied tone that seemed to be
approaching. A turn in the narrow forest
path showed that the grumbler was tame
elephant, entirely alone, who was doing
messengers work BY the conveyance of a
heavy beam of timber which he balanced
on his tusks The pathway being too mar
row for he length of the beam, the elephant
was bending his head on one side to permit
it to pass endwAys, and over this snnoy-
auce he was grumbling to himself. Being
met by horseman who was halting in the
road, he threw his log down. and politely
backed into the brushWod, TIL he left plen-
ty of. room for the traveller to pas; him.
The horse tremSled and hesitated. The
elephant hacked further in among the trees.
AID repeated his cry of 'urmph' in tone
evidently meant to be re assuring and en-
cOuragilg: At LIST the horse timidiy
passed; and as soon as he had gone by, the
elephant of business took up again his hea-