In the history of nearly all animals, there will be found associated some curious fiction. In Burmah and Siam, the white elephant is supposed, by some, to be the abode of a transmigratory Buddha; and in India, certain elephants with a single right tusk are reverenced. In China, the tusks of the mammoth are used in medicine; and in some of the old works, the mammoth itself is described as a huge rat, which lives under the ground in burrows, formed by the tusks, or teeth. The origin of this fable lies in the fact, that, as mammoths were always found beneath the surface, it was assumed, that, when alive, they lived there. Early anatomists stated that the elephant’s head was a storehouse for the water which it blew out of its trunk. It was formerly believed that elephants shed their tusks, as do deer their horns. Ælian says that they drop them once in ten years, which, all things considered, is quite often enough. Pliny repeats the story, but adds some private information of his own, to the effect that they always hid their tusks underground. This curious error has found its way into many comparatively modern works: thus, Sir William Jardine states, in the naturalist’s library, that “the tusks are shed about the twelfth or the tenth year.” Many strange beliefs were entertained regarding the elephant of Ceylon. Travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Pyrard, Bernier, and Phillipe, stated that this elephant was the superior of all others in India, both physically and mentally; and Tavernier is supposed to be authority for the statement, that, if a Ceylon elephant be introduced among others, the latter will instinctively do him homage by touching the ground with their trunks. Phile records the fact that elephants have two hearts. He argued that this was so, because the animal showed extremes of temperament,—one heart controlling the beast when good-humored and docile, and the other when it exhibited the characteristics of the rogue. The older naturalists had few opportunities for making careful anatomical examinations of the elephant, and, naturally, fell into many errors; one of which was, that elephants from sixteen to twenty feet high were not uncommon. Major Denman observed some in Africa which he “guessed” were sixteen feet high; though he afterwards measured one that had been killed, which was twelve feet six inches at the back. Works were published in the last century, which gave the height of the animal as from twelve to fifteen feet; and Sir John Hill, M.D., in his “Natural History of Animals,” 1752, states that elephants were said to measure, when full grown, twenty feet at the shoulder.