VOL. XXVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 565 



glands for separating a certain mucus, with which the inner surface is always 

 bedewed, to keep it moist, and preserve it from the injuries of the air in breath- 

 ing. These two cavities are of great use, for they draw up and contain as much 

 water as serves the animal at once, which afterward it empties into the mouth, 

 as it were from a tunnel: they serve also for breathing, smelling, and uttering 

 the voice. The proboscis is not equally large throughout, but from 38 inches 

 in circumference at the beginning, it becomes gradually smaller, till it be 

 20 inches at the middle, and at the extremity 1 1 inches. It has a hollow carti- 

 lage, where these passages terminate; round this is a cartilaginous margin, 

 which extends itself 1-|- inch before, and terminates in a point, and behind it 

 has, as it were, a hollowness, where this point fixes itself, and takes hold of 

 any thing, as it were a thumb passing in between two fingers; this cartilage is 

 of great strength, and by it the elephant can take up any great weight. 



In searching for the origin of the proboscis, and how it proceeds from the 

 head, I separated the relevatores proboscidis, below which I observed four con- 

 siderable blood-vessels, a vein and an artery from each side, lying upon and 

 descending in a straight line above the before-mentioned cartilages, and dispers- 

 ing their branches every way throughout the substance of the muscles, with two 

 large nerves accompanying them. It is observable, both in human subjects and 

 quadrupeds, that there is a hole below the orbit of the eye in the upper jaw- 

 bone, through which the superior branch of the second division of the fifth pair 

 of nerves passes, in its progress surrounding a vein and an artery; all which are 

 dispersed in the muscles of the cheeks, lips, and nose, and furnish branches 

 for the roots of the teeth of the upper jaw. This hole is not so considerable 

 in human subjects, but larger in quadrupeds, especially such as feed upon grass 

 or hay ; insomuch, that by the size of this branch of the fifth pair in an ox or 

 hart, we may reasonably conjecture that they have a partial taste, and a most 

 acute smelling by the upper lip, the better to enable them to choose their food: 

 for in dissecting a calf's head, we perceive both this nerve and the blood-ves- 

 sels much larger than what might be thought requisite for furnishing either 

 blood or spirits to this part, were there not some extraordinary use for both. 

 Now in this our subject there is a hole in the upper jaw-bone, represented pi. 

 13, by rr, fig. 1 1, by n), fig. 12, and by 8 8, fig. 13, so remarkable for its size, 

 and so commodiously situated, and so well guarded, that there is good reason 

 to believe it may be designed for transmission of the afore-mentioned artery, 

 vein, and nerve, and that all these are distributed into the trunk. I cannot 

 positively determine the capacity of these blood-vessels at the root of the pro- 

 boscis, but they were very conspicuous, and could admit of a goose-quill, though 



