It is evident that wild elephants probe this opening, which is a little larger than a pin-head, and that the sticks used often break off in the orifice, and by working in give the animals such agony that they go mad for the time. When Mr. Cowper Rose shot an elephant in Africa, the men immediately began to hunt for the “piece of wood in the head, to which they attached great value as a charm.” Mr. Rose was evidently not familiar with the gland, or opening. He says, “I sat on one (a dead elephant) while they searched for the wood in his head. It lies about an inch beneath the skin, embedded in fat, just above the eye, and has the appearance of a thorn, or a small piece of twig broken off. Some are without it: and, on examining the spot minutely, we found that there was a small opening in the skin,—a large pore, it may be; and I conceive that this phenomenon is simply accounted for by the twig breaking in this hole when the animal is in the act of rubbing his head against the bushes.” The body of the elephant, weighing sometimes three tons, is supported by four ponderous, pillar-like legs, the movements of which, especially the posterior, or hinder pair attract immediate attention; and the first impression is, that the hind-legs of the elephant are entirely different from those of any other mammal. They seem to bend in the wrong direction. The difference consists merely in the greater length of the thigh-bone, or femur, which brings the knee much farther down than in other animals. The horse is equally remarkable for an opposite reason; as it walks and stands upon the toe-nail of its single toe, while its heel is as high up as the knee of the elephant is low. Covering this wonderful frame, or skeleton, is the loose, wrinkled skin an inch thick, so tough and heavy,—often weighing eight hundred pounds,—that the elephant and others were at one time included in a group called the thick-skinned animals (pachyderms). The skin is comparatively hairless; though some elephants have more than others, and young ones more than adults. The theory generally accepted, is that the elephants of southern countries have lost their hair by long-continued residence in regions where it was not necessary. Quite recently two young or dwarfed Asiatic elephants were exhibited in New York as mammoths, on account of their superabundance of hair; but it is needless to say that they were ordinary Asiatic elephants. * * * * *