a small bough of a tree and holds it at the end of his
trunk; then he uses the bough like a fan, and whisks off, or brushes
off, the flies with it.

And that is what Salar's Mamma taught him to do. After that he was
very comfortable.

Not quite; he had just one more thing to learn from his Mamma, to make
him quite comfortable. The sun gets very hot, and when the elephants
are feeding from tree to tree, or marching through the jungle, they
feel the hot sun on their backs dreadfully--although they have a thick
skin.

Now, how could they guard themselves from the hot sun? Just think!

Why, just as _we_ do, you will say, by using a kind of umbrella! Of
course you mean that an elephant could break off a large bough, and
hold it over his head and over his back! But his trunk would soon get
tired of holding anything as big as that! Besides, he has to use his
trunk all the time to feed! If _you_ had only one hand, you could not
eat with it and at the same time hold an umbrella over your head with
it! Then how _does_ the elephant manage it?

_Elephant Covers his Back from Hot Sun_

I shall tell you. He breaks off many small boughs, one at a time, and
lays them on his back with his trunk; he is careful to lay them in
proper order, and to criss-cross them, so that the boughs will not
fall off. In fact, he tries to arrange them very much like the
thatched roof of a cottage. That is very clever of him, is it not?

But then he does something else, still more clever! When a cottager
builds his thatched roof, he has to plaster the ceiling to prevent any
rain or sunshine from creeping in through the little spaces between
the thatches. So also the thatch on the elephant's back has many gaps,
through which the hot sun can still beat down on his skin. So what
does he do to fill up the gaps?

He cannot do anything to _plaster_ his back; but I shall tell you what
he does do. He just draws into his trunk a lot of dust from the
ground; then he curls up the trunk over his back, and blows the dust
over the gaps in the thatch on his back. Of course he has to do that
many times to fill up all the gaps; but at last, when he does not
_feel_ the sun any more, he knows that his back is quite covered.

Is not that a very wonderful thing for the elephants to think out, all
by themselves? And that is what Salar's Mamma taught him to do.

But, a few years later, he came to the age when boys among men usually
have to go to school. Then Salar