the gyrations of a depending shoulder of mutton, as it revolved and hissed between him and the glowing grate-no, not with the prying mischievous eyes of ordinary monkeys; but with a pensive philosophic air that seemed to admit his own inferiority, and to say-"Ah! man is, indeed, the cooking animal." January, 1838, ELEPHANTS. PART I. "Of all the Beasts which thou This-day did build, Yae (if the Grecians doe not mis-recite) With's crooked trumpet he doth sometimes write." DU BARTAS: The Sixth day of the First Weeke THESE lines are translated "by yt. famous Philomusus, IosHVA SYLVESTER, Gent.," as we are informed in the quaint title-page of the folio edition, printed at London in 1633, by Robert Young, who collected his "most delight-full Workes," and gave them to the public with the following dashing address: "THE PRINTER TO THE READER. "The name of Joshua Sylvester is garland enough to hang before This doore; a name worthily deare to the present Age, to Posteritie. I doe not therefore, goe about to apologize for this Worke, or to commend it: it shall speak for itselfe, louder than eyther others' friendship or envie. I only advertise my Reader that since the death of the Author (if at least it be safe to say those men are dead who ever survive in their living monuments) I have carefully fetcht together all the dispersed Issue of that divine Wit: as those which are well worthie to live (like Brethren) together under one faire roofe, that may both challenge time, and › outweare it. I durst not conceale the harmless fancies of his inoffensive youth, which himselfe had devoted to Silence and Forgetfulness: It is so much the more glory to that worthy. Spirit, that hee who was so happy in those youthful strains (some whereof, lately come to hand, and not formerly extant, are in this edition inserted) would yet turne and confine his pen to none but holy and religious Dities. Let the present and future times injoy so profitable and pleasing a work, and at once honour the Author, and thank the Editor." The book is got up in the best manner, dedicated to gentle King Jamie, and with its Anagrammata Regia—“Jacobus Stuart, Justa Servabo, James Stuart A just Master," for example—and its pilastered "Corona Dedicatoria," forms a very curious and characteristic specimen of the Euphuistic and Garamna literature of the time. But, alas for posthumous fame! how few of the present generation have even heard of Sylvester? Were it not for the imperishable Isaak Walton,* what would be known of Du Bartas himself? There is much more about the Elephant, and the way in which the Dragon circumvents and kills the huge beast, in verse which, although it might have sounded charmingly in the ears of the Royal Apprentice, our readers would hardly thank us for disinterring. Before we enter upon the natural history of the Elephant, and the uses to which he has been applied either in war, the chace, the procession, or the theatre, we will, with the reader's leave, take a rapid view of the organic structure of the huge animal, beginning with the gigantic bony framework. One of the first particular objects that strikes the beholder after the mind has recovered from the impression which the colossal whole never fails to produce, especially when the skeleton of a full grown male is viewed in front, is the enormous size of the cranium; and few of those who are not conversant with the organization of the skull, with its broad anterior expanse, fail to express their surprise at its proportions, or to inquire how a weight apparently so great is supported. The muscles necessary for working the complicated, powerful, and delicate evolutions of the trunk or proboscis, require a broad surface for their attachment; and ponderous as the skull seems,. it is in great part weighty in appearance only. The chamber of the brain, which last forms in the elephant of the whole body, is but of comparatively small extent, although there is ample room for that grand centre of the nervous system in pro 300 portion to the necessities of the animal; and many who have heard of or witnessed its sagacity, deceived by appearances, come to the conclusion that the development of the brain is commensurate with the external surface. If this had been the truth, we should probably have had in the elephant a forty-man reasoning power imprisoned in a frame utterly unfit to carry out the ideas and reflections engendered in that brain, which would have been but inadequately protected from the dangers surrounding a creature whose food is principally obtained by breaking down large branches of trees, and uprooting others of no small dimen, sions. But as it is, the forehead, with its great frontal sinuses, which are larger in the elephant than in any other animal, may be safely used as an immense battering-ram to clear away all obstructions in its path, whilst comparative lightness is secured by the extensive, thin, but firm cellular texture which is so largely developed between the outer and inner tables of the cranium, and becomes an almost impregnable fortification to secure the brain from external danger. It is well known to hunters that the place to which their aim is best directed in elephant shooting is behind the ear, the vulnerable point by which the massacred Chunee was reached at Exeter Change, after his cruel and clumsy foes had been blazing away at him in front till they were weary; and the back part of the cranium is the thinnest and least protected, because it is less exposed to danger. In the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England is the skull of the fine Ceylonese elephant, which has, at some time long passed, been the living target for the rifle of the hunter. There are three bullet wounds, all healed, in the face, and the bullets are still, without doubt, lodged in the reticular diplöe between the two tables of the skull which we have above attempted to describe. One of these wounds is in the forehead. The marksman had evidently aimed at the point where the nasal aperture is situated, and if the ball had entered there it would have only had to encounter the comparatively thin wall of bone at the back of the chamber, and would in all probability have brought the animal down. The second hole is a little to the left of the chamber. The third ball had passed through the upper part of the great temporal muscle of the right side, and entered far into the osseous net-work. On introducing a finger into this wound, a smooth-walled circular bony canal is felt as far as one can reach, so admirably has nature completed the curative process. Still when we remember that in man the brain forms from 22 to of the body, the proportion in the elephant does seem somewhat of the least; but small animals have, generally speaking, a greater brain in proportion to their body than larger ones-in a mouse, for instance, the proportion is, in a canary bird-and the pachyderms, as a class, have it very small. But, notwithstanding these provisions for lightening the burden, the mass to be supported on the neck is enormous: the tusks, the teeth of the upper jaw, the proboscis, and the heavy under jaw, form together the greatest weight that the muscles of the neck and back of any terrestrial animal have to bear. The elevated and roughly-knobbed spinous processes of the vertebræ afford ample surface for the attachment of the ligaments and muscles that support and wield the enormous head, tusks, and trunk; whilst, in the cranium itself, the great temporal fossæ make room for the massive crotaphite muscles to suspend and work the ponderous under jaw. Old elephants have but one tooth on each side of their jaw: nay, they have seldom, till they are aged, a perfect tooth at all for as the jaws continue to grow, the new or succeeding tooth acts partially only at first, and then may be seen two teeth in action. When this advancing tooth has come so forward as to be considerably exposed, the old tooth, reduced and decayed by the pressure of its successor, is shed. This is repeated as long as the animal continues to grow; but when the growth of the jaw stops, the elephant has no longer more than a single tooth to depend upon. The new or advancing grinder is formed not under, but immediately behind the old tooth, and the anterior end of the new tooth comes into play long before the old one is ripe for shedding. Thus the grinding surface is increased and continued by both, till age reduces the elephant to a single tooth. The beautiful provision of bone-forming pulps or plates which unite with the enamel-forming pulps to make the strong and compact compound molar teeth, may be well seen by steeping one of them in acid. The tusks, or, as they were anciently and erroneously deemed, horns, are formed upon a different principle. Instead of a succession of plates, the ivory is deposited by successive secretions of a vascular pulp, in very thin layers, from within. The hollow in an elephant's tusk is familiar to most: this cavity is the seat of the pulpy substance in which are not unfrequently found foreign bodies, such as musket-balls, which have entered through the wall of the hollow part of the tooth when the ivory was in its soft state, and have become firmly imbedded in the ripened and hardened tusk. The enormous size that these offensive and defensive weapons acquire in fine old males is still manifested by specimens which have been kept, on account of their great development and beauty, and saved from the manufacturer. These ponderous tusks are held in the upper jaw not by any adhesion to the pulpy root, as it may be termed, but by the elasticity of the parts alone, somewhat in the same way that a nail keeps its place in a plank. Some notion may be entertained of the high degree of vascularity of the tusk from an accident that happened to one of the elephants formerly kept at Exeter Change. The animal nearly bled to death from the laceration of the vessels of the pulp contained in the cavity for the purpose of supplying constant internal additions of successive laminæ, as the tusk is worn down externally. Mr. Lawrence, in a note to his translation of Blumenbach, thus lays before us the modes in which a foreign body may become set, as it were, in the surrounding ivory. "We can explain very satisfactorily how a bullet may enter the tusk of an elephant, and become imbedded in the ivory without any opening for its admission being perceptible. It will be shown in a subsequent note, that these tusks are constantly growing during the animal's life, by a deposition of successive laminæ, within the cavity, while the outer surface and the point are gradually worn away and that the cavity is filled for this purpose with a vascular pulp, similar to that on which teeth are originally formed. If a ball penetrate the side of a tusk, cross its cavity, and lodge in the slightest way on the opposite side, it will become covered towards the cavity by the newly-deposited layers of ivory, while no opening will exist between it and the surface to account for its entrance. If it have only sufficient force to enter, it will probably sink by its own weight between the pulp and tooth, until it rests at the bottom of the cavity. It there becomes surrounded by new layers of ivory; and as the tusk is gradually worn away, and supplied by new depositions, it will soon be found in the centre of the solid part of the tooth. Lastly, a foreign body may enter the tusk from above, as the plate of bone which forms its socket is thin; if this descends to the lower part of the cavity, it may become imbedded by the subsequent formations of ivory. This must have happened where a spear-head was found in an elephant's tooth. The long axis of the foreign body corresponded to that of the cavity. No opening for its admission could be discovered, and it is very clear that no human strength could drive such a body through the side of a tusk." (Phils. Trans. 1801. Part 1.) The greatest recorded weight of a tusk known to us is three hundred and fifty pounds: the tooth was sold at Amsterdam. Topsell, to whose work, quoted by Izaak Walton in the seventh chapter of the first edition of his "Compleat Angler," and in the eighth of the second, we shall presently draw attention more at large, mentions a book on Judæa, without the name of the author, who affirms that he saw an elephant's tooth sold to a Venetian |