386 MamMALIA OF INDIA. 
elasticity to the foot, and, with the soft cushion spoken of by Professor 
Dawkins, would account for the noiselessness of the elephant’s tread. 
On one occasion a friend and myself marched our elephant up to a 
sleeping tiger without disturbing the latter’s slumbers. 
It is a curious fact that twice round an elephant’s foot is his height ; 
it may be an inch one way or the other, but still sufficiently near to 
take as an estimate. 
Now we come to a third peculiarity in this interesting animal, and 
that is the power of withdrawing water ora similar fluid from apparently 
the stomach by the insertion of its trunk into the mouth, which it 
sprinkles over its body when heated. The operation and the modus 
operandi are familiar to all who have made much use of elephants, but 
the internal economy by which the water is supplied is as yet a mystery 
to be solved, although various anatomists have given the subject serious 
attention. It is generally supposed that the receptacle for the liquid is 
the stomach, from the quantity that is ejected. An elephant distressed 
by along march in the heat of the sun withdraws several quarts of 
water, but that it is water, and not a secretion produced by salivatory 
glands, is not I think sufficiently evident. In talking over the matter 
with Mr. Sanderson, he informed me that an elephant that has drunk a 
short time before taking an arduous march has a more plentiful supply 
of liquid at his disposal. Therefore we might conclude that it is water 
which is regurgitated, and in such quantity as to preclude the idea of its 
being stored anywhere but in the stomach; but the question is, how it 
is so stored there without assimulating with the food in the process of 
digestion. Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and well-known, but 
in some respects incorrect, account of the elephant, has adopted the 
theory that the cardiac end of the stomach is the receptacle for the 
water ; and he figures a section of it showing a number of transverse 
circular folds ; and he accepts the conclusion arrived at by Camper and 
Sir Everard Home that this portion can be shut off as a water chamber 
by the action of the fold nearest to the cesophagus; but these folds are 
too shallow to serve as water-cells, and it has not been demonstrated 
that the broadest fold near the cesophagus can be contracted to such an 
extent as to form a complete diaphragm bisecting the stomach. Messrs. 
Miall and Greenwood say: ‘‘ The stomach is smooth, externally elon- 
gate, and nearly straight. The cardiac end is much prolonged and 
tapering. A number of transverse, nearly circular, folds project inwards 
from the cardiac wall; they almost disappear when the stomach is 
greatly distended, and are at all times too shallow to serve as water-cells, 
though they have been figured and described as such.” 
That the stomach is the reservoir is, I think, open to doubt; but 
there is no other possible receptacle as yet discovered, though I shall 
allude to a supposed one presently, which would hold a moderate supply 
