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EXTRACTS FROM THE FOREIGN PERIODICALS. 



ZOOLOGY. 



I. On the Proboscis of the Elephant; by Dr. Campbell. — The powers of 

 this organ are so wonderful and various, that an inexperienced dissector must fail 

 in elucidating its composition. Barring Man, the Elephant must surely be 

 considered as the lord of the animal kingdom ; largely endowed with intelligence, 

 sagacity, and power, it remains chief among the desert wilds, and among the 

 numerous creatures devoted to the service of Man. Where is its equal ? Among 

 all the organs of sense and motion, the trunk is the most indispensable to the 

 preservation of the individual. Eyes, ears, a limb, and generative organs could 

 be dispensed with, but deprived of the proboscis, the Elephant in its free state 

 could no longer preserve its being ; purely herbivorous, and that in the largest 

 sense of the word, the formation of the animal is such that he is deprived of 

 the mouth as a means of grasping the aliment on which alone he can live. The 

 shortness and immobility of the neck prevents him from bringing the mouth 

 downwards to seize vegetables little raised from the surface of the earth, and 

 the same cause prevents his applying it to the purpose of furnishing himself with 

 the leaves of trees and shrubs. Independent of this shortness and limited action 

 of the neck, his system of dentition is such as to preclude the possibility of his 

 cutting or pulling Grass with the mouth from the ground. The lower jaw with 

 incisor teeth sloping outwards, by which the Ruminants are enabled so freely to 

 cut their herbivorous food on the ground, is widely different in the Elephant. 

 At its inferior part, the lower jaw is narrow and sharp, and without incisor teeth ; 

 the lower lip projects considerably beyond the jaw, and the upper jaw is also 

 destitute of incisors. All these circumstances show that he never could exist Unas- 

 sisted, without some other means being given to him by which he could bring his foo4 

 under the action of his grinder teeth. This means is the proboscis, and perhaps 

 throughout animated nature, it is without a superior, and scarce has an equal among 

 corporeal organs ; in it are concentrated the organs of touch, the channels to the 

 internal olfactory apparatus, the prehensile powers of a noble and huge animal, 

 and added to this, it is the external organ of respiration, and is used as a 

 pump and reservoir for drawing up and containing the fluid part of its food, then 

 passing it into the pharynx. With the proboscis, he is enabled to swim the 

 deepest rivers, to bathe and fan himself, and with it he can with equal ease pick 

 a pin from the infant fingers of his keeper's child, or fell a forest tree. The 

 wonderful propensities of this organ have been long known and acknowledged in 

 : the east, and the polytheists of India have seldom made such a happy choice o' 



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