ON THE ANATOMY OF THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 47 



necessary, to Perrault's figures and descriptions under the organs 

 described*. 



Within the last fifteen years African Elephants have been imported 

 in considerable numbers from Nubia and other parts of the Upper-Nile 

 basin, via Egypt and Trieste into Europe t. Altogether considerably 

 more than a hundred must have reached Europe alive ; but although 

 some of these must surely, ere now, have fallen victims to the numerous 

 diseases that attack animals in captivity, nothing, as far as I can learn, 

 has been published on the anatomy of any of these animals till the 

 current year. In the first part of the ' Archiv fur Naturgeschichte ' for 

 the present year (1879), Dr. August von Mojsisovics, of Gratz, has 

 published an article "Zur Kenntniss des afrikanischen Elephanten,"i in 

 which he describes certain portions only of the visceral anatomy 

 namely, the structure of the pharynx, particularly as regards the 

 existence of a " pharyngeal pouch " (hereafter to be alluded to), and of 

 the bronchi, the pancreas and pancreatic duct, and the male genital 

 organs ; and of these figures are given on three plates. 



During the past winter one of the African Elephants in the possession 

 of the Alexandra Palace Company succumbed to the severity of the 

 weather. By the courtesy of Mr. Jones, the Secretary of the Company, 

 the body was made over to Mr. Bartlett, and was sent up to the Society's 

 Gardens so as to be more easily examined . As our anatomical 

 knowledge of this species is still so rudimentary, I make no hesitation 

 in laying before the Society the following notes on such parts of its 

 anatomy as I examined, the more so as the very considerable differences 

 which occur in the various accounts of those who have dissected the P. Z. S. 1879, 

 Indian species || make it advisable to put on record any observations, p * 



* Besides this, there are a few short statements on various parts of the anatomy of 

 E. africanus in Prof. Flower's lectures on the digestive organs of Mammalia (alluded 

 to below) and in Prof. Macalister's recently published ' Morphology of Vertebrata.' 

 Donitz has described the kidney (Reichert & Du Bois-Reymond's Archiv, 1872, p. 85). 



t For an account of the introduction of African Elephants into Europe, see a letter 

 by Carl Hagenbeck, the well-known animal-dealer of Hamburg, in ' Land and Water,' 

 March 29, 1879. 



J L. c. pp. 56-92, t. v.-vii. 



Unfortunately this was not effected till about one week after the death of the 

 animal. This fact, as well as the deaths of several other large animals requiring 

 examination at the same period, made the preliminary dissections rather hurried, and 

 must be an excuse for any errors or omissions in the following descriptions. 



|| The amount of literature on the anatomy of the Indian Elephant is very 

 considerable. A rfaumt, of the principal papers on the subject will be found in Messrs. 

 Miall and Greenwood's ' Anatomy of the Indian Elephant ' (pp. 6, 7), recently pub- 

 lished, a book which is itself a useful compendium of our present knowledge of 

 Proboscidean anatomy. The myology, however, is described at greater length than 

 any other parts. 



