46 ON THE ANATOMY OF THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 



Ent.M.M.*iv. is. STAPHYLINUS FULVIPES IN THE NEW FOREST.* 



p. 233 (1878). 



ON two occasions last year, whilst staying at Lyndhurst for a few days, 

 I had the good fortune to meet with a specimen of this rare and very 

 pretty insect. Both captures were decidedly " flukes/' as I shook the 

 first out of moss in Beecham Lane on March 29th, whilst the second was 

 taken running on the ground in a grassy ride at night, attracted thither 

 by the light of a sugaring-lantern, at the end of July. This second 

 capture was effected in the same wood where, in 1876, I took Qaedius 

 dilatatus at sugar. Staphylinus fulvipes has not, I think, been recorded 

 from this district before ; hitherto, Folkestone, Home Fen, and the 

 Glasgow district seem to have been the localities most favoured by it. 



p.z.s.1879, 14. ON THE ANATOMY OF THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT 

 P' 420 ' (ELEPHAS AFRICANUS, BLUM.).f 



ALTHOUGH the African Elephant was well known, both in their wars 

 and games, to the Romans, till within the last few years hardly any 

 specimens of this species had been seen in Europe since the days of the 

 Roman Empire. With but one exception, as far as I can find out, all 

 our knowledge of the soft structures of the Proboscidea has been, till 

 the present year, derived from examination of the Asiatic species. In 

 his 'Memoires pour servir a Fhistoire naturelle des Animaux'^, 

 published in 1734 by the Academie Royale des Sciences of Paris, Claude 

 Perrault describes an African Elephant " du Royaume de Congo," which 

 P.Z.S.1879, was presented to the King of France by the King of Portugal, and 

 p. 421. lived from 1668 to 1681 at Versailles, when it died and came into his 

 hands for dissection . In his memoir on this specimen (which extends 

 over fifty pages) the anatomy of most of the soft parts is described, 

 though, as a rule, somewhat briefly, that of the trunk, structure of the 

 nasal organs, and female reproductive organs only being described at 

 greater length. In the following account I shall make reference, where 



* Ent. Month. Mag. xiv. p. 233 (1878). 



t Proc. Zool. Soc. 1879, pp. 420-435. Eead May 6, 1879. 



J Tome iii. partie 3, pp. 101-156, pis. 19-24. 



This animal was a female, and was supposed to be, when it arrived in Paris, 

 about four years old. (It was probably much older.) It was then 7 feet high, but 

 during the thirteen years it lived at Versailles only grew 1 foot in height. M. Per- 

 rault gives a figure of this specimen on pi. 19 of his memoir ; this figure clearly 

 shows the enormous ears characteristic of the African Elephant, but is very defective 

 as regards the hind, and particularly the fore, feet. 



