a saucy tiger senseless, and bellow like the bass horn in a brass band.
But why is it called trunk?
Don't you suppose nearly every little boy and girl in the world has asked that question? And got an answer something like this: "Oh, just because it is." But that is no answer. The name is really trompe, a French word meaning trumpet, for the trumpeting sound the animal makes. English people misunderstood the word and changed it to trunk. Besides it looks like the stem or trunk of a small tree turned upside down; and there is a hollow tube for forcing pellets through, something like a pop-gun, that is called a trunk. So trunk seems just about as good a name as trompe, doesn't it?
Elephants live in herds like buffaloes. There are from twenty-five to one hundred in a herd. They wander about together in the woods and on the open plains of Africa and India, wherever there is plenty of grass, low plants and trees, near water. They sleep in the forest. As early as three o'clock, long before the sun rises, a herd is on the march. They go in single file, the big bulls in front breaking a path through the thickest jungle. Then come the cows, and last the mothers with babies. This is the order in which Indians travel, the warriors ahead and the children in the rear.
If danger threatens, the bulls trumpet a warning. All the others stop, and the bulls line up to give battle to the enemy. Some people think that only the flesh-eating animals are dangerous. This is a mistake, as you must know when you remember how savage some bulls of domestic cattle are. African bull elephants are so fierce the lion tucks his tail between his legs and slinks away, when he hears one trumpeting. The tiger sometimes attacks the smaller East Indian elephant, and often gets the worst of it.
African explorers and travellers say a charging bull elephant is a grand and terrible sight. He blows his mighty trumpet in a blast that can be heard for miles, lowers his head with its six foot tusks, and tosses his trunk up out of danger. He knows how easily that precious member, all delicate muscles and nerves, might be injured by claw or spear. When a tiger springs, the bull catches him on the tusks, tosses him twenty feet in the air, gives him a swinging blow with the trunk as he comes down that stuns him, then pins him to the earth with the tusks, or tramples him under his three tons of weight. It is said that every pair of tusks brought out of Africa has cost one or more human lives.
