And yet this formidable and delicate weapon is nothing more than a long fleshy nose and upper lip, provided with millions of interlaced muscles, which draw it in every direction, guided by the delicate nerves. If we did not see it, could we have believed that any creature could have gained so much experience, and learned to do so many wonderful things as elephants do, merely by possessing a movable nose? Yet so it is, for if the elephant stands far above all other vegetable-feeding animals in intelligence and even reasoning power, we can only attribute it to two causes--the long life he leads, and the delicate implement he carries for testing things around him. The strongest of all animals, he has reigned supreme for ages, even the lion or the tiger often meeting a terrible death from his trunk, his tusks, or his heavy feet, if they venture to attack him; while everywhere, during his hundred years of life, he has handled and tested and tried every object he has come near with his fleshy trunk, till now when we examine his brain we find that though small for so large an animal it is folded and refolded into those curious convolutions which are always found in highly intelligent animals. For many long ages this education must have been going on; for already, when the monkeys and opossums were playing about the trees in England, an ancient elephant called the Mastodon, having four tusks, was roaming over Europe, Asia, and America; while soon after, the hairy Mammoth, kept warm by his shaggy coat, wandered right up into the snows of Siberia and the extreme of North America, and often met his death in the ice, and true elephants ruled the world in Europe and India, continuing down to our day. All these had the same delicate trunk, and gained experience as they wandered over the wide world, till some have become extinct and others have shrunk back into the dense forests of Africa and India, where they often give proofs of a power of reasoning which surprises us, and make them seem like old patriarchs of a bygone time, looking thoughtfully upon a world which has grown new and strange. * * * * *