--part of which was cooked for supper.

Although all the flesh of the elephant is eatable, the trunk is esteemed
one of the delicate bits. It tastes not unlike ox-tongue; and all of
them liked it exceedingly. To Swartboy, who had made many a meal upon
"de ole klow," it was a highly-relished feast.

They had plenty of fine milk, too. The cow, now upon the best of
pasture, doubled her yield; and the quantity of this, the most delicious
of all drinks, was sufficient to give every one a large allowance.

While enjoying their new-fashioned dish of roast elephant-trunk, the
conversation naturally turned upon these animals.

Everybody knows the appearance of the elephant, therefore a description
of him is quite superfluous. But everybody does not know that there are
two distinct kinds of this gigantic quadruped--the _African_ and
_Asiatic_.

Until a late period they were thought to be of the same species. Now
they are acknowledged to be, not only distinct, but very different in
many respects. The Asiatic, or, as it is more frequently called, the
"Indian" elephant is the larger of the two; but it is possible that
domestication may have produced a larger kind, as is the rule with many
animals. The African species exists only in a wild state; and it would
appear that individuals of this kind have been measured having the
dimensions of the largest of the _wild_ Asiatic elephants.

The most remarkable points of difference between the two are found in
the ears and tusks. The ears of the African elephant are of enormous
proportions, meeting each other above the shoulders, and hanging down
below the breast. Those of the Indian elephant are scarce one-third the
size. In his grand tusks the former has far the advantage--these in
some individuals weighing nearly two hundred pounds each--while the
tusks of the latter rarely reach the weight of one hundred. To this,
however, there are some exceptions. Of course a two hundred pound tusk
is one of the very largest, and far above the average even of African
elephants. In this species the females are also provided with tusks--
though not of such size as in the males--whereas the female of the
Indian elephant has either no tusks at all, or they are so small as to
be scarcely perceptible outside the skin of the lips. The other chief
points of difference between the two are that the front of the Asiatic
elephant is concave, while that of the African is convex; and the former
h