These, however, are trivial and almost accidental advantages:  on the other hand, owing to irregularities in their growth, the tusks are sometimes an impediment in feeding[1]; and in more than one instance in the Government studs, tusks which had so grown as to approach and cross one another at the extremities, have had to be removed by the saw; the contraction of space between them so impeding the free action of the trunk as to prevent the animal from conveying branches to its mouth.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Among other eccentric forms, an elephant was seen in 1844, in the district of Bintenne, near Friar’s-Hood Mountain, one of whose tusks was so bent that it took what sailors term a “round turn,” and resumed its curved direction as before.  In the Museum of the College of Surgeons, London, there is a specimen, No. 2757, of a spira tusk.]

[Footnote 2:  Since the foregoing remarks were written relative to the undefined use of tusks to the elephant, I have seen a speculation on the same subject in Dr. HOLLAND’S “Constitution of the Animal Creation, as expressed in structural Appendages;” but the conjecture of the author leaves the problem scarcely less obscure than before.  Struck with the mere supplemental presence of the tusks, the absence of all apparent use serving to distinguish them from the essential organs of the creature, Dr. HOLLAND concludes that their production is a process incident, but not ancillary, to other important ends, especially connected with the vital functions of the trunk and the marvellous motive powers inherent to it; his conjecture is, that they are “a species of safety valve of the animal oeconomy,”—­and that “they owe their development to the predominance of the senses of touch and smell, conjointly with the muscular motions of which the exercise of these is accompanied.”  “Had there been no proboscis,” he thinks, “there would have been no supplementary appendages,—­the former creates the latter.”—­Pp. 246, 271.]

It is true that in captivity, and after a due course of training, the elephant discovers a new use for its tusks when employed in moving stones and piling timber; so much so that a powerful one will raise and carry on them a log of half a ton weight or more.  One evening, whilst riding in the vicinity of Kandy, towards the scene of the massacre of Major Davie’s party in 1803, my horse evinced some excitement at a noise which approached us in the thick jungle, and which consisted of a repetition of the ejaculation urmph! urmph! in a hoarse and dissatisfied tone.  A turn in the forest explained the mystery, by bringing me face to face with a tame elephant, unaccompanied by any attendant.  He was labouring painfully to carry a heavy beam of timber, which he balanced across his tusks, but the pathway being narrow, he was forced to bend his head to one side to permit it to pass endways; and the exertion and this inconvenience combined led him to utter the dissatisfied sounds