528 



UNGULATES. 



Never found dead. 



A curious circumstance in connection with these animals is, that 

 the bones of those which have died a natural death are scarcely ever 

 found in the forests of India, and we believe that the same is true with regard to 

 Africa. It has accordingly been suggested that elephants are in the habit of 

 resorting to particular spots when about to die, as is known to be the case with 

 the guanaco in South America {supra, p. 415), but as no such mortuaries have 

 ever been discovered in India, this seems scarcely tenable, and the subject accord- 

 ingly still remains a complete mystery. 



The Indian Elephant (Elephas indicus). 



The Indian, or, as it might be better termed, the Asiatic elephant, is the more 

 specialised of the two living species, and at the same time the one most familiarly 

 known. It is characterised by its comparatively flat forehead, and relatively 



a right upper molar tooth of an elephaxt, allied to the existing Indian species (f nat. size). 



small ears ; as well as by the nearly naked skin being smooth, and the tail having 

 a row of long bristly hairs at the tip, and a few inches upwards, before and behind 

 only. The fore-feet have each, as a rule, five nails, and the hinder ones four. 

 Generally the males only have large tusks, those of the females being small and 

 scarcely protruding beyond the jaws. In some males — known in India as mackna, 

 the tusks are, however, not longer than those of females. The back of the Indian 

 elephant is regularly convex, its middle point being higher than the withers. 



Perhaps, however, the most important characteristic of this species is to be 

 found in the structure of the molar teeth, which are of the same type as the 

 example represented in the accompanying illustration. In these teeth the plates 

 of enamel-bordered ivory are very thin and closely approximated, and may reach 

 as many as twenty-four in the last of the series. The enamel is thrown into a 

 number of line puckerings, and each enamel - bordered area forms a greatly 

 elongated and irregular ellipse. In the first tooth (as shown in the figure on 

 p. 525), the number of the ridges is usually four, in the second eight, in the third 

 and fourth about twelve, in the fifth sixteen, while in the last it may, as already 

 mentioned, be as many as twenty-four. 



