it is hard to tell the direction of the wind. I used to light wax taper matches as tests, for they could be struck without any noise and the flame would show the direction of the slightest breath of air.
In many other ways besides its smelling ability the elephant's trunk is the most extraordinary part of this most extraordinary animal. A man's arm has a more or less universal joint at the shoulder. The elephant's trunk is absolutely flexible at every point. It can turn in any direction and in whatever position it is, and has tremendous strength. There is no bone in it, of course, but it is constructed of interwoven muscle and sinew so tough that one can hardly cut it with a knife. An elephant can shoot a stream of water out of it that would put out a fire; lift a tree trunk weighing a ton and throw it easily; or it is delicate enough to pull a blade of grass with. He drinks with it, feeds himself with it, smells with it, works with it, and at times fights with it. Incidentally, a mouse that endeavoured to frighten an elephant by the traditional nursery rhyme method of running up his trunk would be blown into the next county. There is nothing else like an elephant's trunk on earth.
And for that matter, there is nothing else like the elephant. He has come down to us through the ages, surviving the conditions which killed off his earlier contemporaries, and he now adapts himself perfectly to more different conditions than any other animal in Africa.
He can eat anything that is green or ever has been green, just so long as there is enough of it. He can
