[Footnote 214:  It is surely needless to say that this is a mere fable.—­E.]

There are three kinds of elephants, as of the marshes, the plains, and the mountains, differing essentially from each other.  Philostratus writes, that by how much the elephants of Lybia exceed in bigness the horses of Nysea, so much do the elephants of India exceed those of Lybia, for some of the elephants of India have been seen nine cubits high; and these are so greatly feared by the others, that they dare not abide to look upon them.  Only the males among the Indian elephants have tusks; but in Ethiopia and Lybia, both males and females are provided with them.  They are of divers heights, as of 12, 13, or 14 dodrants, the dodrant being a measure of 9 inches; and some say that an elephant is bigger than three wild oxen or buffaloes.  Those of India are black, or mouse-coloured; but those of Ethiopia or Guinea are brown.  The hide or skin of them all is very hard, and without hair or bristles.  Their ears are two dodrants, or 18 inches in breadth, and their eyes are very small.  Our men saw one drinking at a river in Guinea as they sailed along the coast.  Those who wish to know more of the properties of the elephant, as of their wonderful docility, of their use in war, of their chastity and generation, when they were first seen in the triumphs and amphitheatres of the Romans, how they are taken and tamed, when they cast their tusks, and of their use in medicine, and many other particulars, will find all these things described in the eighth book of Natural History, as written by Pliny.  He also says in his twelfth book, that the ancients made many goodly works of ivory or elephants teeth; such as tables, tressels or couches, posts of houses, rails, lattices for windows, idols of their gods, and many other things of ivory, either coloured or uncoloured, and intermixed with various kinds of precious woods; in which manner at this day are made chairs, lutes, virginals, and the like.  They had such plenty of it in ancient times, that one of the gates of Jerusalem was called the ivory gate, as Josephus reports.  The whiteness of ivory was so much admired, that it was anciently thought to represent the fairness of the human skin; insomuch that those who endeavoured to improve, or rather to corrupt, the natural beauty by painting, were said reproachfully, ebur atramento candefacere, to whiten ivory with ink.  Poets also, in describing the fair necks of beautiful virgins, call them eburnea colla, or ivory necks.  Thus much may suffice of elephants and ivory, and I shall now say somewhat of the people, and their manners, and mode of living, with another brief description of Africa.