117 



The bones are those of the largest elephant ever brought to the 

 United States, the animal having been about nine feet in height 

 during life. It was frozen to death on its passage, and died when 

 within a few miles of this city, at Nantasket roads. At the time of 

 the dissection, measurements were accurately taken by Dr. S., and 

 the flesh was removed from the feet and tail, under his direction, 

 so carefully that no bone was lost or displaced in either. The 

 bones of the sternum and cartilages were prepared and preserved 

 in a manner to retain their natural relations to the bones of the 

 thorax. The thickness of the intervertebral substance was noted, 

 and the form of the spinal column draughted, so that the bones, 

 when put together, should exhibit, in the dry skeleton, the same 

 form they had when covered with flesh. 



Dr. S. stated that the reason of his mentioning this careful 

 mode of procedure was not for the purpose of showing that this 

 is his usual way of securing a knowledge of the proper form of 

 skeletons ; but because, having found that the Society's specimen 

 does not agree in all respects with the description by Cuvier, he 

 wished to have it seen that the differences were not caused by 

 the loss or misplacement of the bones. 



Cuvier, in his Ossemens Fossiles, states that " the spine of the 

 elephant is composed of seven cervical, twenty dorsal, three 

 lumbar, four sacral, and twenty-four or twenty-five coccygeal 

 vertebrae, and that this animal has five true ribs only, and fifteen 

 false." This, certainly, is not always the case, for our specimen 

 has Jive sacral, like the Mastodon giganteum, and tiventy-six 

 coccygeal vertebrce, including the terminal bone. Our skeleton 

 has likewise six true ribs. A point worthy of especial notice, as 

 observed in our skeleton, is the fact that there are only nineteen 

 pairs of ribs, while there are twenty dorsal vertebrae, the last 

 dorsal vertebra possessing all the characteristics of a vertebra of 

 that class, but showing no appearance that it ever had ribs articu- 

 lated with it, which appearance is very distinct in all the other 

 dorsal vertebrrc. The number of sacral vertebra} agreeing with 

 that of the North American Mastodon, brings that extinct animal 

 nearer to the existing races of Pachydermata. 



The remarks made upon our skeleton of the elephant are 

 equally true in regard to another specimen of the Asiatic 

 elephant, a young animal whose bones are in the collection of 



