As to actual “courtship” among these animals practically nothing is known; but the varied and formidable weapons which they possess are enough to show that the secondary sexual characters play a very important part in the preliminary capture of mates. That they may also be used for the more prosaic purpose of securing food is nothing to the point. In the Elephant, for example, the tusks are sometimes of enormous size and weight, specimens of eleven feet in length and weighing as much as two hundred and fifty pounds are on record. They are used for cutting through the bark of machabel trees, which is then seized by the trunk and torn off, for elephants are extremely fond of this bark; and they are also turned to account in breaking up roots which have been exposed by digging with the fore-feet. But this is certainly not the main purpose of such weapons. On the contrary, their use is primarily as weapons of offence between rival bulls. As one would expect, they never attain to a very large size in the female, but that they are large enough to serve her at need is shown by the fact that a portion of a tusk, evidently of a cow-elephant, was once found embedded in the jaw of a bull. There can be little doubt but that this was broken off in an endeavour to repel the advances of a too amorous male, for, as with all animals, pairing is impossible without the consent of the female, and this is never accorded until she is desirous that it should take place. As a preliminary to this, an amorous dalliance is perhaps the invariable rule among animals, and this takes many and often strange forms. The Elephant affords a case in point. For the late A. H. Neumann once came upon a pair which were evidently, as he says, “love-making.” Creeping upon them noiselessly, he found the male fondling his mate with his trunk, and then, standing side by side, they crossed their trunks, and put the tips thereof into each other’s mouths, the elephantine form of kissing. Deer, cattle and horses, cats and dogs, constantly lick one another under like circumstances.