98 PACHYDERMES. 



and roots, while smelling and touch seems to 

 guide to those which have been uprooted, the eye 

 being seldom, if ever, used in discriminating their 

 food. 



The skeleton of the Pachydermes is necessarily 

 of great strength, perhaps better expressed by the 

 word massive. The immense weight of the head 

 in most species renders a muscular apparatus of 

 great power indispensable, and for this purpose 

 there must be a large surface of insertion for the 

 muscles. The head, by its extended surface 

 gives attachment to those of the neck, which 

 are the most powerful, not only for the support 

 of the head, but to assist in the operations of 

 digging, or employing the tusks or horn as a 

 defence. " The processes of the cervical vertebrae 

 are here more strongly developed, than in the 

 long flexible neck of the Ruminantia, and the 

 spinous processes of the dorsal vertebrae are 

 lengthened, and strong, and generally terminated 

 by round tubercles. The scapula is generally 

 broader at its vertebral margin, and the strong 

 pelvic arch is more vertical in its direction ; the 

 extremities are generally shorter and more mas- 

 sive, and the separate bones more completely 

 formed, than in the former groups of quadrupeds. 

 The ulna and the fibula being developed through- 

 out, and four toes at least, generally reaching the 

 ground on all extremities."* They are, as poetically 

 * Grant's Outlines, p. 105. 



