I suppose every reader of Harper's Young People has seen an elephant eat pea-nuts. Of course every boy who goes to a show has pea-nuts in his pocket, because pea-nuts seem somehow to be a part of the show. Sometimes I think they are almost a part of the boy, for that matter. Well, having pea-nuts in one's pocket, and being inside the show, it is quite a matter of course to feed pea-nuts to the elephant. The fun lies in the ridiculous difference of size between the pea-nut and the elephant; it seems in a high degree absurd that so huge a creature should care for so small a thing to eat, and the wonder is that the elephant does not lose the nut somewhere in his great mouth. If he could get pea-nuts by the pint, instead of singly, the wonder would be less.

But how many boys and girls ever saw the baby elephant eat pea-nuts? He does it in a way entirely different from that of his father and mother. He does not like the shells, and so he cracks the nuts as carefully as any boy does, and his method of doing this is as curious as anything about him. I found out his trick by accident one day, when the baby elephant was a very little fellow indeed, weighing not more than five hundred pounds or so. I had taken three boys with me to the show, and of course each of us had a pocket full of pea-nuts. When we came to inspect the baby elephant, we offered him a nut. He took it with the fingers at the end of that wonderful trunk of his, but did not place it in his mouth, as his father or mother would have done. He laid it on the ground instead, and raising one of his great clumsy-looking feet, swept it backward so near the ground as to catch the nut between the foot and the hard earth, cracking it very neatly without crushing it. He knew enough not to step on the nut, and he used his foot so dextrously that a single stroke separated the kernel from the shell. Then he picked up the kernel with his trunk, put it in his mouth, and ate it with as keen a relish as if he had been a boy at recess.

This performance was so entertaining that we repeated it again and again. The elephant was willing enough, and before long all the boys and girls in that part of the show had gathered around us to see the strangely intelligent act. We boys (for I am always a boy when I am with boys at a show) fed Master Baby Elephant all the pea-nuts we had—there was a quart of them distributed among us—and when we got through, others took our places.

We had to go through that show without any pea-nuts to eat, but we had found out how the baby elephant manages to use his great clumsy-looking foot for a nut-cracker.

Now there are two or three things that puzzle me about this matter. I want to know how the baby elephant learned to crack his pea-nuts. Instinct? Well, that is a good word with which to pretend that we explain things that we do not understand, but it will scarcely answer in this case. In their wild state elephants have no boys to give them pea-nuts, and as a matter of fact they have no instinct about pea-nuts. The baby elephant did not learn this from the grown-up elephants, for they do not crack their nuts. I wonder if he imitated some boy whom he saw cracking a nut with his heel.

Another thing I am curious about. Will the baby elephant go on cracking his nuts in this way when he becomes a grown-up elephant? The grown-up elephants do nothing of the kind. If he does not continue the practice, and so become an exceptional fellow, but leaves it off after a while, at what age will he make the change, and why will he change? If he prefers cracked to uncracked nuts one day, why should he prefer the uncracked ones the next day? I wish I could work this puzzle out by going to the show every day, and feeding the baby elephant with pea-nuts until he grows up or changes his way of eating them. Perhaps the members of the Young People's Natural History Society through the country will keep up a series of observations until the matter is settled.

A POISONOUS FOOD-PLANT.

There is a shrub called manioc, or manihot, or cassava, which grows in South America, the West Indies, and Africa. It has a great bulbous root, and it is this root which is interesting. In that species of the plant which is most used the root has a bitter, acrid juice, which is deadly poisonous. The strange part of the matter is that both the root and the poisonous juice are used for food, and probably every boy or girl who reads this has eaten both.

The natives of hot countries dry the root, and make good wholesome bread out of it. It is only the juice which is poisonous or disagreeable in taste. But the juice itself contains a kind of starch, and when the liquid parts of it are evaporated, there remains—what do you think? Why, the tapioca of which your mother makes puddings.

But why isn't tapioca poisonous? Why is Brazilian arrowroot—which is only the manioc root dried and powdered—harmless and nutritive? What becomes of the poison, and how can we be sure that none of it remains in the tapioca or the arrowroot?

Pour a spoonful of alcohol on a plate, and set it in the air or sunshine. Then look for it half an hour afterward. The plate will be dry, and not even a smell of the alcohol will remain. Liquids which evaporate easily and completely in this way are called volatile, and the acid which renders manioc root poisonous is extremely volatile. When the least heat is applied to any mixture containing it, the acid quickly and completely evaporates, and that is the way in which it disappears in the process of making tapioca, or drying the root to make arrowroot of it. There is a small quantity of bitter material in the manioc juice which is removed by washing the tapioca as soon as it is made.