THE ELEPHANT.
The elephant, though classed with the thick-skinned animals, has not a perfect hoof; it has, indeed, five distinct toes, which are perfectly visible in the skeleton, though in the living animal they are so incrusted in a callous skin which surrounds the foot, that only their points are seen, and these seem attached to the margin of an imperfect hoof. Elephants also differ from most of the other animals in this division, in two of their teeth being prolonged into a pair of tusks, which project very far beyond the mouth, and, indeed, sometimes attain an enormous size. But the most extraordinary part of the elephant is the trunk or proboscis, which is, in fact, a prolongation of the nose or snout. It is composed of thousands of small muscles variously interlaced, so as to enable the animal to extend or contract it, or move it about in every possible direction at pleasure. It is of a tapering sub-conical form, and appears internally to consist of two tubes. On the upper side of the extremity, immediately above the partition of the nostrils, is an elongated appendage which serves as a finger; and on the under edge is a kind of tubercle which acts as a thumb. Both are endowed with the most exquisite sense of touch, and being placed at the end of an organ of such extraordinary flexibility as the trunk, which, when extended, is nearly eight feet long, it is not surprising that the elephant can with equal facility "root up trees or gather grass; raise a piece of artillery or pick up a comfit; kill a man or brush off a fly." As the mouth of the elephant is very inconveniently placed either for biting the grass or the leaves of trees, on which it generally feeds, the elephant uses its trunk to seize its food and to convey it to its mouth; and as the skin of the trunk is capable of extraordinary dilation, the elephant employs this organ to pump up enormous quantities of water, which, by its recurvature, are turned into and driven down the capacious throat, or showered over the body at pleasure. Thus, the immense length of the trunk makes it supply the place not only of a hand, but of a long neck, which would have been incompatible with the support of the large head and weighty tusks. A glance at the head of an elephant will show the thickness and strength of the trunk at its insertion; and the massy arched bones of the face, and the thick muscular neck are admirably adapted for supporting and working this powerful and wonderful instrument.
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.
The hippopotamus is peculiar to Africa, where it inhabits the fresh waters of the central and southern parts of that continent. Mr. Salt gives a very striking account of one he met with in Abyssinia. His attention was roused by hearing his attendants cry "Gomari," (their name for a hippopotamus,) and looking towards the river he caught a glance of an enormous creature in the water, the action of which somewhat resembled the rolling of a grampus or a porpoise in the sea. The river was about fifty yards across and very deep, and Mr. Salt and his party, stationing themselves on a high overhanging rock, waited till they saw the hippopotamus rise to the surface. In a short time they saw an enormous head raise itself above the water with a violent snort. The muskets were instantly discharged, and their contents seemed to strike directly on the forehead of the animal, "on which he turned round his head with an angry scowl, and, making a sudden plunge, descended to the bottom, uttering a peculiar noise between a grunt and a roar." The sportsmen thought he was killed, but to their great astonishment, they found that he had only quietly descended to the bottom, where, the water being exceedingly clear, they distinctly saw him standing erect, at least twenty feet beneath the surface. After remaining five or six minutes under the water, he rose again to the surface, and the sportsmen again fired and hit him, but with no more effect than before, for the balls being only of lead were too soft to enter his impenetrable skull.
THE TAPIR.
The tapir is a native of South America. It bears considerable resemblance to the wild boar, but it is without tusks, and has its snout elongated into a small fleshy proboscis or trunk, which, however, is so far from having the flexibility of that of the elephant, that it is incapable of holding anything, and is only used by the animal as the pig uses its snout, to search for roots buried in the ground. When pursued, the tapir seeks its safety in close and thorny thickets, which cannot affect it on account of the thickness of its skin, though they lacerate the dogs and men who generally pursue it. The tapir, like the hippopotamus, can descend to the bottom of a pond or river, and remain under water five or six minutes, without any apparent inconvenience. It is also extremely tenacious of life, as one that was shot ran for a considerable time before it fell, though, on examining its body, it was found that two balls had entered its heart.
THE HORSE FAMILY.
The horse, the ass, the mule, the quagga, and the zebra, all belong to this family. Horses, apparently wild, are found in troops or herds in various countries, but it is said that the true wild horse is only found in central Asia; for though immense herds of horses exist apparently wild in South America, it is supposed they are all descended from some trained horses brought there by Europeans, and the reason is this: at whatever age the South American horses are caught, they may very soon be rendered fit for the service of man, sometimes, indeed, in a few days; and they rarely relapse into a state of wildness; whereas the Asiatic wild horses can only be tamed when taken young, and frequently shew themselves in after life to have been but half subdued.
The ass, in a wild state, is very different from our domestic breed. It is, indeed, a noble animal, with fine slender limbs, and a glossy skin, carrying its head loftily, and moving in a very swift and graceful manner. It appears, however, that the tame ass was reduced to servitude, and used as a beast of burden, earlier than any other animal, and it is from this degenerate race that our common domestic ass has been produced.
RUMINATING ANIMALS.
The animals belonging to this division have a kind of double hoof, which forms what is generally called a cloven foot. Some of them, such as the ox tribe and deer, are furnished with horns, but in other respects their general appearance bears considerable resemblance to that of the thick-skinned animals, their connecting link with which appears to be the pig, which resembles them in its cloven feet. It has been remarked, however, that all the thick-skinned animals, including the swine, have the habit, when they have lain down, of placing their fore-legs erect on the ground, before they rise on their hind-legs. The ruminating animals, on the contrary, rise first on their hind-legs, and often remain on the knees of their fore-legs for some seconds, until the hind-legs are straightened, before they rise entirely. The principal difference, however, is the singular property which the ruminating animals possess, of ruminating, or chewing the cud. All these animals are provided with four stomachs, and to understand how they operate, it is only necessary to observe how a cow takes her food. "When a cow is turned into a field, she twists her tongue round mouthful after mouthful of the long grass, and after biting each off, conveys it, without chewing, to her first stomach or paunch, till this is about half full, when the animal seems stimulated by nature to seek rest and quiet, for she leaves off eating, and either stands perfectly still in some shady place, or lies down. The paunch now exerts its extraordinary power of separating a small portion of the food it contains, and returning it to the mouth, when the animal begins slowly to masticate it, moistening it as she does so with small quantities of water, which she draws up from time to time from her second stomach, or honeycomb, in which water is retained for that purpose; and this operation is called chewing the cud. The food, when thoroughly masticated, is conveyed by another channel to the third stomach, or manyplies, where it is subjected to muscular action; and, finally, it is conveyed into the fourth stomach, or red bag, which contains the gastric juice, and which in calves is the part used for rennet; and here the process of digestion is completed. Sheep, goats, deer, and camels are all ruminating animals, and are, of course, all furnished with the same apparatus for digestion; but in sheep the paunch is smaller, as they bite close to the ground, and take smaller mouthfuls than cattle."
THE CAMEL.
Camels have the second stomach, or receptacle for water, much larger than any other animals, and it is the largeness of this second stomach which enables the camel to go so long without drinking, as they are equally incapable with other animals of living long without water: the only difference is, that they are provided by nature with the means of carrying water about with them. Hence it is, that in a desert the camels are generally more eager to drink when they approach water, than any other animal; and the men belonging to a caravan can tell when water is near, long before they see it, by the ungovernable impatience of the camels, which, though remarkably quiet and patient at other times, on these occasions, snuff up the air, and quicken their pace, some of them even breaking their halters. On one occasion a mounted camel was so eager, that the moment it saw water, it rushed forward to the spot, and, stumbling as it bent down its head to drink, threw its rider into the stream.
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The dromedary is not a different species, as is generally supposed, but only a particularly swift kind of camel, bearing the same relation to the common camel as the race-horse does to the common horse.
THE GIRAFFE.
The giraffe, or cameleopard, is another ruminating animal, as are the rein-deer, the elk, all the kinds of antelope, and the goat. The giraffe is so curiously formed, that if it had not been so frequently seen alive, it would be difficult to believe in its existence. The extraordinary length of the neck, the smallness of the head, and the apparent disproportion of the fore and the hind legs, are so different to the general proportions of quadrupeds, that, even when we see these animals, we can hardly fancy it possible that they can move. In a wild state, they feed entirely upon the leaves and young branches of trees, and for this mode of living their long necks and small heads are admirably adapted. Their mode of galloping on the plains of Africa, of which country they are natives, is described as being most extraordinary, but they go so slowly that it is said that a man can go nearly as fast on foot. The live specimens that are in England appear to be very gentle and good tempered, but one of the females who had a young one, proved herself a very bad mother, as she would not suffer it to approach her, till at last the poor thing actually died for want of food.
THE ANTELOPE FAMILY.
The antelope is a very interesting animal, and the gazelle or Barbary antelope is often mentioned by poets for the beauty of its eyes, and the general elegance of its form. The springer antelope, or spring-bok of the Dutch, is remarkable for the vast herds in which it congregates. It inhabits the plains of southern and central Africa, and migrates from one place to another, completely destroying the vegetation by its multitudes. Mr. Pringle, in one of his works, calculates that he had sometimes had not less than 20,000 of these animals in view at one time. When these antelopes migrate from one part of Africa to the other, "the lion has been observed to accompany their onward journey, walking like a grizzly tyrant in the midst of a dense phalanx of these beautiful but fearful creatures, with only as much space between him and the antelopes as the irrepressible terror of those around him could obtain by pressing outwards; this singular procession generally continuing for a long time, since, as long as the antelopes continued together, the lion did not dare to attack them; but the moment an unhappy straggler lingered behind, the lion sprang upon him, and carrying off his victim, left the remainder of the herd to pursue their way in peace. The smallest of the African antelopes is no larger than a rat, and it has legs no thicker than a goose's quill. These beautiful little creatures are generally brought from the coast of Guinea, but they have been found near the Cape of Good Hope.