The Elephant’s mouth is armed with broad and strong grinding teeth, and two large tusks, which measure sometimes nine or ten feet, and from which the finest ivory is produced. The ivory from the tusks of the female is thought the best, as the tooth, being smaller, admits less porosity in the cellular part of the mass. Becoming tame under the mild treatment of a good master, the Elephant is not only a most useful servant, for the purposes of state or war, but is also of great assistance in taming the wild ones that have been recently caught. Indian superstition has paid great honours to the white race of this quadruped; and the island of Ceylon is supposed to breed the finest of the kind. This immense beast, by the wisdom of Providence, has not been placed among the carnivorous animals: and vegetable food being much more abundant than animal, he is destined to live on grass and the tender shoots of trees. This noble creature bears in state on his back the potentates of the East, and seems to delight in pompous pageantry: in war he carries a tower filled with archers; and in peace lends his assistance in domestic operations. The female is said to go a year with young, and to bring forth one at a time. The Elephant lives a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty years, though they have been known to live to the great age of four hundred. When Alexander the Great had conquered Porus, King of India, he took a large Elephant which had fought very valiantly for the king, and naming him Ajax, dedicated him to the sun, and then let him loose with this inscription:--“Alexander, the son of Jupiter, hath dedicated Ajax to the sun.” This Elephant was found with this inscription 350 years after. The greatest wonder the Elephant presents to the admiration of the intelligent observer of nature is his _proboscis_, or trunk, which attains a length of six or eight feet, and is so flexible that he uses it almost as dexterously as a man does his hand. It was erroneously said, that the Elephant could receive nourishment through his trunk; this sort of pipe is nothing but a prolongation of the snout, for the purpose of breathing, into which the animal can by the strength of his lungs draw up a great quantity of water or other liquid, which he spouts out again, or brings back to his mouth by inverting and shortening his proboscis for this purpose.