The tusks of the Elephant are by no means necessarily sexual adornments, used for fighting purposes only. The African Elephant is a most "industrious digger," and grubs up innumerable roots as food. It appears to be a fact that during these operations the right tusk is mainly used, and in consequence that tusk is shorter as well as thinner than the other. Two average tusks would weigh respectively 75 and 65 lbs., the latter of course being the weight of the more worn right tusk. These weights, it should be observed, by no means indicate the limits to which finely-developed tusks can attain. The very heaviest tusk known to Sir Samuel Baker[141] weighed 188 lbs. This was sold at an ivory sale in London in the year 1874. The pace of the African Elephant, says the same authority, is at most at the rate of fifteen miles an hour at first, and of course in a furious rush. This pace cannot be kept up for more than two or three hundred yards, after which ten miles an hour is a better approximation to the rate which can be kept up for long distances. The Indian Elephant, _Elephas indicus_ (or _Euelephas indicus_, if the genus _Loxodon_ is to be accepted), is better known and has been longer known than the African. It occurs in India and Ceylon, and in some of the Malayan islands, the Elephants of which latter parts of the world have been regarded as a distinct form, an apparently unnecessary procedure. [Illustration] FIG. 118.--Indian Elephant. _Elephas indicus._ x 1/54. (After Sir Samuel Baker.) This species does not stand so high at the shoulder as the African; its back is more rounded in the middle. The trunk has but one pointed tip; there are five nails on the fore- and four on the hind-feet. As this species comes from India and the East, it has been longer as well as better known than the African form. Thus many of the stories and legends that have congregated round Elephants apply really to this form. As is well known, the Indian Elephant is much used as a beast of burden, and for other purposes where its huge strength renders it invaluable. But its great drawback as a servant of man is its great independability. On the one hand we have furious, vicious, and generally unreliable {224} Elephants, and on the other perfectly docile creatures, who obey the slightest hint from their driver. Huge though the Elephant is, it is frequently a timid beast. Sir Samuel Baker relates how one which he was riding fairly bolted at the sight of a Hare. To {225} be bolted with by an Elephant is far from pleasing, though a rather exciting event. It makes for the nearest jungle at once, being, much more than the African species, an inhabitant of forest. And in rushing through the dense undergrowth, the occupiers of the Elephant's back are apt to be swept off or cut to pieces by innumerable thorns.