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Observe the absence of a trunk and the enlarged front tooth in the upper jaw, which is converted in later members of the elephant-stock or line of descent into the great tusk. We now know the complete series of steps connecting elephants with ordinary trunkless, tuskless mammals.
Whilst the tuskless elephant crushes the latter under foot, thereby soiling it and wasting its moisture; the other, by opening it with the point of his tusk, performs the operation with delicacy and apparent ease.
At one time while I watched, a tuskless elephant or mutna got his log stuck in the mud and was tugging and roaring profanely about his trials, when the tusker's mahout bid that royal beast go help his troubled brother.
When the tusks get broken a not uncommon thing he must remain toothless or "tuskless" for the rest of his life. Although the elephant may consider the loss of his huge tusks a great calamity, were he only a little wiser, he would break them off against the first tree.
Whatever the circumstances, the shooting is prohibited of all young game calves, foals, young elephants, either tuskless or having tusks under three kilos, all female game if recognizable except, of course, those in the above category of unprotected animals.
Claudian, in the fourth century, alludes to diptychs, speaking of "huge tusks cut with steel into tablets and gleaming with gold, engraved with the illustrious name of the Consul, circulated among great and small, and the great wonder of the Indies, the elephant, wanders about in tuskless shame!"
When the tusks get broken a not uncommon thing he must remain toothless or "tuskless" for the rest of his life. Although the elephant may consider the loss of his huge tusks a great calamity, were he only a little wiser, he would break them off against the first tree.
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