are eaten raw by the country people or dressed with their curries; and when simply boiled with rice, they afford a strengthening and wholesome nourishment. They are, however, frequently applied to a worse purpose; for they yield by distillation a strong spirit, which is sold at so cheap a rate, that for the value of one half-penny a man may purchase sufficient to make himself completely inebriated. These flowers, also, make an article of trade; and are exported to Patna and some other places in considerable quantities.

The oil expressed from the fruit resembles ghee so much, that, being cheaper, the natives often mix it with that commodity, in the preparation of their victuals, and in the composition of some sorts of sweetmeats. It is also regarded as a salutary remedy, applied externally, for wounds and cutaneous eruptions. This oil, after being kept some time, acquires a bitterish taste and rancid smell, which renders it rather disagreeable as an article of food but this inconvenience might probably be avoided if greater pains were taken in its preparation. It is exported, both in its original and adulterated state to Patna, and other parts of the low country. A good mahwah-tree will produce about three hundred weight of dried flowers, and the seeds will yield nearly sixty pounds of oil.

The wood, from what has been already said of it, cannot be expected to be often had in beams of any considerable length; but it appears to be, in many respects, very useful; and, as it is remarkably tough, and of a strong texture, Mr. Hamilton supposes, that it might be successfully used in ship building.

ANIMALS.

THE elephant, the largest of all quadrupeds, and an animal, which, in many respects, merits our attention, is a native of India. It is a genus of that class of quadrupeds, called by Linnæus the Jumenta, the characters of which are, that the` teeth are few in number, and disposed in an irregular manner; and often they differ from one another extremely in size and figure. The generic characters of the elephant are, that there are no fore-teeth in the mouth; the upper canine teeth are very long; the anterior part of the head is furnished with a very long and flexible proboscis ; the teats are two; and they are situated on the breast. Of this singular genus, there is only one species, which is the elephant, and of which the size alone, had it no other distinctive character, would be sufficient to make it known from all the other quadrupeds in the world: but it has other singularities of the most striking and obvious kind. When at full growth, it measures from seventeen to twenty feet in height from the ground to the highest part of the back, which is six or seven feet broad, and somewhat protuberant. The elephant has a round thick body, a large short head, and a short neck; a long proboscis, snout, or trunk, hanging down almost to the ground; a little narrow mouth, with two long tusks proceed. ing from the upper jaw, one on each side of the proboscis; besides four strong grinders in each jaw; small piercing eyes, and large flat ears. Its legs are round and thick, supporting its vast weight like so many columns; and its feet are short, those before being broader and rounder

than those behind, each of them defended by four hools. Its skin is very hard, especially on the breast; its colour is generally dusky or black, but there is a white species, not so common as the others.

The proboscis or trunk of the elephant is of such a structure, that he can extend or contract, dilate, raise or depress, and bend or twist it about at pleasure. Sometimes he makes it of a concave, sometimes of a convex form; now doubles it, again expands it, and in short turns it round every way with surprising agility. By this member he takes in his meat and drink, and conveys them to his mouth; by this he takes up a vast weight, levels trees, and makes use of it as a hand upon all occasions; and it likewise serves for the purposes of smelling and respiration.

It is really wonderful to observe how nimbly the elephant moves his trunk, considering its bulk, being six or seven feet long, and three feet pr more in circumference at its origin, but growing' smaller from thence to its extremity. The shortness of the elephant's neck is compensated by the length of this member, which Dr. Derham says is so admirably contrived, so curiously wrought, and applied with so much agility and readiness by that unwieldy creature to its several occasions, that he thinks it a manifest instance of the Creator's wisdom.

It was formerly asserted that, the female elephant sucked her own milk, and by means of this proboscis, conveyed the nutriment to her young ones, because the offspring was supposed incapable of sucking its dam by reason of the position of mouth. But this appears to have been a vulerror; for J. Corse, esq. assures us, in the

Asiatic Researches, that he has seen young elephants, from one day to three years old, sucking their dams; and this gentleman asserts that they suck constantly with their mouths, never using their trunks except to press the breast, which, by natural instinct they seem to know will make the milk flow more freely. Here we must also

observe, that the actual observations of modern authors have completely overturned what has been so often related concerning the mode of connection between the male and female, their supposed delicacy, and a variety of other hypotheses equally void of foundation.

The grinders of the elephant are of such a thickness, both in the upper and lower jaw, as contributes to render the mouth narrow; nor need it be broader, because the strength of the grinders is so great, as to comminute the aliments at once in such a manner, that they do not want to be moved to and fro in the mouth, in order to be farther masticated, as is usual with other animals; and therefore the tongue is small, short, and round, (not thin and flat, as in an ox) and has a smooth surface.

As to the tusks of the elephant, which are what we call ivory, the male has larger than the female, some of them being seven or eight feet long, and weighing from a hundred, to a hundred and fifty pounds; insomuch that Tavernier tells us they make door-posts of them in the Indies, and it is related, that in the kingdom of Laos they make fences with them round their gardens. The same traveller says, that the elephants of Ceylon have no tusks, except the first which the female produces; and this seems to be confirmed by Mr. Knox in his account of that island, who says that

few elephants there have tusks, and those only the males,

Historians inform us, that elephants were used in war by the ancients, and so they are at this day by several of the Indian princes. Tavernier was told that the Great Mogul kept three or four thousand elephants; but the chief master assured him he had not above five hundred, which were kept to carry women, tents, &c. and eighty or ninety for war. This indeed is a great number of tamed ones, from whence we may conclude there were a vast number of wild ones in his dominions, besides those in other parts of the Indies.

Riding on elephants is esteemed a piece of state that becomes none but the great, and is principally appropriated to the Mogul himself, the princes of the blood, the great officers of the crown, and the nabobs or viceroys of provinces; and nothing can surely be more adapted to strike the mind with awe, and raise the impressions of pomp and grandeur, than one of these enormous beasts, richly caparisoned, and bearing on its back a kind of canopied throne, in which the person who sits in majestic state, is fully conspicuous from such an eminence. These unwieldy animals are, however, growing into disuse for war, since the more prevailing use of fire-arms, and its being discovered, that, notwithstanding their amazing docility, it is impossible to break and train them to the field so perfectly, as to be certain they will not do more mischief to those to whom they belong, than to the enemy; especially when exasperated with wounds, to which their prodigious bulk renders them extremely liable. There are, however, several elephants in the army of the Mogul, that will not only stand fire, but suffer a great gun to