PACHYDERMATA : ELEPHANTID^E. 8/ 



ELEPHANTID.E, OR ELEPHANT FAMILY. This Family 

 comprises animals of colossal size, the largest and the 

 most powerful of all the land animals, with the nose 

 extended into a very long prehensile snout, upper incisors 

 developed into enormous tusks, head short and expanded 

 above by large sinuses, neck and body short and thick, 

 limbs long, without angles or bends, and the toes five 

 and united to the hoofs. Their gigantic proportions, 

 their peculiar organization, and their intelligence and 

 sagacity, combine to make them objects of great inter- 

 est to the common observer, as well as to the naturalist. 

 One of the remarkable features of the elephant is the 

 proboscis or trunk. This long and cylindrical organ is 

 composed of several thousand muscles variously inter- 

 laced, is extremely flexible, and endowed with the most 

 exquisite sensibility, and is terminated by an appendage 

 which serves as a sort of finger. This trunk, agile and 

 powerful, is at the same time the organ of smell, of touch, 

 of prehension, and of defence. With it its possessor seizes 

 everything he wishes to convey to his mouth, drink as 

 well as food ; thus obviating the necessity of a long neck, 

 which would be inconsistent with the enormous head and 

 heavy tusks, the latter weighing sixty to one hundred 

 pounds each. Elephants at the present day are confined 

 to the warm regions of the Eastern hemisphere. They 

 are seven to ten feet high, and ten to fifteen feet in length, 

 and covered with thick, nearly naked skin. One distinc- 

 tive characteristic is found in the grinders of these ani- 

 mals, the bodies of which are composed of a certain 

 number of vertical laminae, each one being formed of a 

 bony substance enveloped with enamel, and cemented 

 together by a third substance termed cortical. The 

 grinders succeed each other, not as our permanent teeth 

 succeed the milk ones, but from behind forwards, so that 

 as fast as one tooth becomes worn it is pushed forward 



