he other world, "foully trampled to death by the knees and feet of
elephants" ([Greek: pempsein eis haden en gonasi kai posi therion
hekismenous.] 3 Mac. v. 42). AELIAN makes the remark, that elephants on
such occasions use their _knees_ as well as their feet to crush their
victims.--_Hist Anim._ viii. 10.]

A sportsman who had partially undergone this operation, having been
seized by a wounded elephant but rescued from its fury, described to me
his sufferings as he was thus flung back and forward between the hind
and fore feet of the animal, which ineffectually attempted to trample
him at each concussion, and abandoned him without inflicting serious
injury.

KNOX, in describing the execution of criminals by the state elephants of
the former kings of Kandy, says, "they will run their teeth (_tusks_)
through the body, and then tear it in pieces and throw it limb from
limb;" but a Kandyan chief, who was witness to such scenes, has assured
me that the elephant never once applied its tusks, but, placing its foot
on the prostrate victim, plucked off his limbs in succession by a sudden
movement of the trunk. If the tusks were designed to be employed
offensively, some alertness would naturally be exhibited in using them;
but in numerous instances where sportsmen have fallen into the power of
a wounded elephant, they have escaped through the failure of the enraged
animal to strike them with its tusks, even when stretched upon the
ground.[1]

[Footnote 1: The _Hastisilpe_, a Singhalese work which treats of the
"Science of Elephants," enumerates amongst those which it is not
desirable to possess, "the elephant which will fight with a stone or a
stick in his trunk."]

Placed as the elephant is in Ceylon, in the midst of the most luxuriant
profusion of its favourite food, in close proximity at all times to
abundant supplies of water, and with no enemies against whom to protect
itself, it is difficult to conjecture any probable utility which it
could derive from such appendages. Their absence is unaccompanied by any
inconvenience to the individuals in whom they are wanting; and as
regards the few who possess them, the only operations in which I am
aware of their tusks being employed in relation to the oeconomy of the
animal, is to assist in ripping open the stem of the jaggery palms and
young palmyras to extract the farinaceous core; and in splitting the
juicy shaft of the plantain. Whilst the tuskless elephant crushes the
latt