The proboscis of the elephant is used by its owner with all the ease and skill of a human hand. Through it, it can draw up water and pour it over its back, or squirt it wherever it chooses; it can use sand in the same way, and by an arrangement of valves near the air-passages, the water and sand while thus drawn up are kept out of the nostrils and air-tubes. The tip of the trunk is prolonged into a finger and a thick knob which serves for a thumb. With these the elephant can pick up even so small an object as a cherry or a pin. With this hand-like extremity of the trunk, the animal conveys food to its mouth. To the elephant its proboscis is indispensable and invaluable; clumsy in its motions, with a very short neck, which does not permit the head to bend to the ground, and thick, pillar-like legs, difficult to bend, what would it do without this long, flexible appendage? With it the elephant collects food and drink, tears off fruit and leaves from the trees, and taking a branch for a fan, drives off the teasing insects which settle on its vast body. A horse switches off insects with its tail, but the tail of the elephant is small, slim, and bare, very like that of the pig. With the proboscis the elephant strikes down its enemies, pumps water for its bath, lifts a burden to or from its back, defends its young, and shrieks and roars, as if braying through a trumpet when hurt or angry. From this trumpeting noise, the French have called the proboscis a “tromp,” or trumpet, which we have corrupted into that senseless name for a proboscis, a trunk. In a fight with a lion or tiger, the elephant keeps its proboscis held aloft, out of harm’s way, waving it like a banner, and sounding an alarm, and uses its tusks for a weapon, wherewith to gore or toss its foe. It also tramples on its enemies, and crushes them with its enormous weight. With its tusks the elephant also uproots trees when it wishes to secure dainty leaf-food, too high up to pull down with its proboscis. The skin of the elephant is bare, exceedingly thick, much wrinkled, and of a dark lead color, nearly black. The head is large, the eyes are small; the mouth is set under the thick upper part of the trunk, and is guarded by the tusks. The legs are enormously large and clumsy, and so are the feet, which have live toes enclosed in a cushion of thick skin up to the nails. Elephants live from seventy-five to one hundred and thirty years. The baby elephant is woolly about the head and shoulders. It sucks its mother’s milk not through the proboscis, but with its mouth. The mother is very fond of her big baby, and is valiant in its defence. Elephants are enormous feeders, consuming half a bushel of grain and two hundred pounds of green herbage a day.