The Hide
Or Skin Of Them All Is Very Hard, And Without Hair Or Bristles.
Their
ears are two dodrants, or 18 inches in breadth, and their eyes are very
small.
Our men saw one drinking at a river in Guinea as they sailed
along the coast. Those who wish to know more of the properties of the
elephant, as of their wonderful docility, of their use in war, of their
chastity and generation, when they were first seen in the triumphs and
amphitheatres of the Romans, how they are taken and tamed, when they
cast their tusks, and of their use in medicine, and many other
particulars, will find all these things described in the eighth book of
Natural History, as written by Pliny. He also says in his twelfth book,
that the ancients made many goodly works of ivory or elephants teeth;
such as tables, tressels or couches, posts of houses, rails, lattices
for windows, idols of their gods, and many other things of ivory, either
coloured or uncoloured, and intermixed with various kinds of precious
woods; in which manner at this day are made chairs, lutes, virginals,
and the like. They had such plenty of it in ancient times, that one of
the gates of Jerusalem was called the ivory gate, as Josephus reports.
The whiteness of ivory was so much admired, that it was anciently
thought to represent the fairness of the human skin; insomuch that those
who endeavoured to improve, or rather to corrupt, the natural beauty by
painting, were said reproachfully, _ebur atramento candefacere_, to
whiten ivory with ink.
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