[Footnote 3:  The number of elephants has been similarly reduced throughout the south of India.]

Had the motive that incites to the destruction of the elephant in Africa and India prevailed in Ceylon, that is, had the elephants there been provided with tusks, they would long since have been annihilated for the sake of their ivory.[1] But it is a curious fact that, whilst in Africa and India both sexes have tusks[2], with some slight disproportion in the size of those of the females:  not one elephant in a hundred is found with tusks in Ceylon, and the few that possess them are exclusively males.  Nearly all, however, have those stunted processes called tushes, about ten or twelve inches in length and one or two in diameter.  These I have observed them to use in loosening earth, stripping off bark, and snapping asunder small branches and climbing plants; and hence tushes are seldom seen without a groove worn into them near their extremities.[3]

[Footnote 1:  The annual importation of ivory into Great Britain alone, for the last few years, has been about one million pounds; which, taking the average weight of a tusk at sixty pounds, would require the slaughter of 8,333 male elephants.

But of this quantity the importation from Ceylon has generally averaged only five or six hundred weight; which, making allowance for the lightness of the tusks, would not involve the destruction of more than seven or eight in each year.  At the same time, this does not fairly represent the annual number of tuskers shot in Ceylon, not only because a 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.]