portion of the ivory finds its way to China and to other places, but
because the chiefs and Buddhist priests have a passion for collecting
tusks, and the finest and largest are to be found ornamenting their
temples and private dwellings. The Chinese profess that for their
exquisite carvings the ivory of Ceylon excels all other, both in density
of texture and in delicacy of tint; but in the European market, the
ivory of Africa, from its more distinct graining and other causes,
obtains a higher price.]

[Footnote 2: A writer in the _India Sporting Review_ for October 1857
says, "In Malabar a tuskless male elephant is rare; I have seen but
two."--p. 157.]

[Footnote 3: The old fallacy is still renewed, that the elephant sheds
his tusks. AELIAN says he drops them once in ten years (lib. xiv. c. 5):
and PLINY repeats the story, adding that, when dropped, the elephants
hide them under ground (lib. viii.) whence SHAW says, in his _Zoology_,
"they are frequently found in the woods," and exported from Africa (vol.
i. p. 213): and Sir W. JARDINE in the _Naturalist's Library_ (vol. ix.
p. 110), says, "the tusks are shed about the twelfth or thirteenth
year." This is erroneous: after losing the first pair, or, as they are
called, the "milk tusks," which drop in consequence of the absorption of
their roots, when the animal is extremely young, the second pair acquire
their full size, and become the "permanent tusks," which are never
shed.]

Amongst other surmises more ingenious than sound, the general absence of
tusks in the elephant of Ceylon has been associated with the profusion
of rivers and streams in the island; whilst it has been thrown out as a
possibility that in Africa, where water is comparatively scarce, the
animal is equipped with these implements in order to assist it in
digging wells in the sand and in raising the juicy roots of the mimosas
and succulent plants for the sake of their moisture. In support of this
hypothesis, it has been observed, that whilst the tusks of the Ceylon
species, which are never required for such uses, are slender, graceful
and curved, seldom exceeding fifty or sixty pounds' weight, those of the
African elephant are straight and thick, weighing occasionally one
hundred and fifty, and even three hundred pounds.[1]

[Footnote 1: Notwithstanding the inferiority in weight of the Ceylon
tusks, as compared with those of the elephant of India, it would, I
think, be precipitate to draw the infere