18/9.] MR. W. A. FORBES ON THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. 421 



of Portugal, and 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 necessary! to 

 Ferrault s figures and descriptions under the organs described 2 



Within the last fifteen years African Elephants have been imported 

 10 considerable numbers from Nubia and other parts of the Upper- 

 Nile basin, via Egypt and Trieste iuto Europe 3 . Altogether con- 

 siderably 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 anv 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 

 afrikamschen Elephanten," J 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 j and of these figures 

 are given on three plates. a 



During the past winter one of the African Elephants in the pos- 

 session 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 5 

 As our anatomical knowledge of this species is still so rudimentary' 

 1 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 



nhlJ 1 ? 8 animal W fS a £ maIe > an <l ™» supposed to be, when it arrived in Paris, 

 about four years old. (It was probably much older.) It was then 1\ feet high 

 but during the thirteen years it lived at Versailles only grew 1 foot in height! 

 M. Perrault 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 



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



anatomy ■_«* Eafrnanm in Prof. Flower's lectures on the digestive organs of 



Mammalia (alluded to below) and in Prof. Macalister's recently published 



Morphology of Vertebrata.' Domtz has described the kidney (Eeichert & Du 



Bois-Eeymond's Archiv, 1872, p. 85). 



i .! F ? r anac ^ unt of tb e introduction of African Elephants into Europe see a 

 letter by Carl Hagenbeek, the well-known animal-dealer of Hamburg in 'Land 

 and Water, March 29, 1879. 



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



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

 the ammal. This fact, as well as the deaths of several other large animals re- 

 quiring examination at the same period, made the preliminary dissections 

 rather hurried, and must be an excuse for any errors or omissions in the fol- 

 lowing descriptions. 



