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 of these animals is found in the grind- 

 ers, the crown of which is deeply divided into transverse 

 vertical plates, each consisting of dentine coated by en- 

 amel, and this by a bone-like substance which fills the 

 spaces between the plates and cements them together. 

 The grinders succeed each other from behind forward, 

 and there is never more than one, or two partially, on 

 each side of both jaws at the same time ; for the se- 

 ries is in constant process of shedding and replacement. 



