carriage) ("Troilus and Cressida," Act II) "The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure." An old writer says: "The elephant hath no joints, and, being unable to lye down, it lieth against a tree, which, the hunters observing, do saw almost asunder; whereon the beast relying--by the fall of the tree falls also down itself, and is able to rise no more." Another old writer (Bartholomew, 1485), says, more correctly: "When the elephant sitteth he bendeth his feet; he bendeth the hinder legs right as a man." A writer of 120 years later in date (Topsell) says: "In the River Ganges there are blue worms of sixty cubits long having two arms; these when the elephants come to drink in that river take their trunks in their hands and pull them off. At the sight of a beautiful woman elephants leave off all rage and grow meek and gentle. In Africa there are certain springs of water which, if at any time they dry up, they are opened and recovered again by the teeth of elephants." The blue worm of the Ganges referred to is no doubt the crocodile; both in India and Africa animals coming to the rivers to drink are seized by lurking crocodiles, who fix their powerful jaws on to the face (snout or muzzle) of the drinking animal and drag it under the water. Thus the fable has arisen of the origin of the elephant's trunk as recounted by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. A young elephant (before the days of trunks), according to this authority, when drinking at a riverside had his moderate and well-shaped snout seized by a crocodile. The little elephant pulled and the crocodile pulled, and by the help of a friendly python the elephant got the best of it. He extricated himself from the jaws of death. But, oh! what a difference in his appearance! His snout was drawn out so as to form that wonderful elongated thing with two nostrils at the end which we call the elephant's trunk, and was henceforth transmitted (a first-rate example of an "acquired character") to future generations! The real origin of the elephant's trunk is (as I will explain later) a different one from that handed down to us in the delightful jungle-book. I do not believe in the hereditary transmission of acquired modifications!