In their growth, tusks often assume strange shapes, being liable to twist, just as the horns of a cow. Livingstone saw an elephant with three tusks, the third one growing out between the other two. The tusks frequently grow straight; some twist in a spiral, others form a complete circle; and many elephants have only one from birth,—like the fictitious unicorn. These animals are called _Gunésh_ by the natives. The name is that of the Hindoo god of wisdom; and, if the single tusk of the _Gunésh_ is the right one, the animal is reverenced. Some dimensions of tusks will be given in the chapter on Ivory. Perhaps the largest was one sold in Amsterdam some years ago. It weighed, according to Kolokner, three hundred and fifty pounds. Eden measured several nine feet in length, and one described by Hartenfels exceeded fourteen feet. There is one in the museum of Natural History, Paris, seven feet in length. The uses to which the large incisors are put, are often exaggerated. The African elephant employs its tusks to uproot small mimosa-trees, but they are never used to overthrow as large objects as is often stated. Sir Samuel Baker measured mimosa-trees four feet six inches in circumference, and thirty feet high, which elephants had pulled down; and the damage they cause in a mimosa-forest is almost incredible. These trees, however, have no tap-root, and are comparatively easy to overthrow. Gumming says, “I have repeatedly ridden through forests where the trees thus broken down lay so thick across one another that it was almost impossible to ride through the district.” The female elephant uses her tusks to scrape the barks from trees; but the large tusks of the males are designed as a defence,—the elephant with the finest tusks ruling the herd,—and terrific wounds are made by them. The elephant Conqueror, in this country, was killed by being gored in this way; and in India, when it is necessary at the government corral to subdue a mad elephant, a reliable tusker is provided with steel tusks, or glavies, which fit over the stumps of the others, and with these they do terrible work. If we examine the skull of the elephant, we find only two molar teeth on each side of each jaw,—eight in all; and no more, as a rule, are seen at one time, twenty-four in all appearing during the lifetime of an elephant.