324 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



The first will be that t)f the Pachydermata, with 

 a proboscis, and with tusks, or the Probosci- 

 diana* ; which have five toes on all the feet; very 

 complete in the skeleton, but so encrusted in the 

 callous skin which surrounds the foot, that they do 

 not appear externally, except by the nails attached 

 to the edge of this sort of hoof. They have no 

 canines, or incisors, properly speaking, but two 

 tusks are implanted in the incisive bone, which 

 spring from the mouth, and frequently attain to an 

 enormous size. The necessary magnitude of the 

 alveoli of these tusks renders the upper jaw so high, 

 and so far bends back the bone of the nose, that the 

 nostrils are found in the skeleton toward the top of 

 the face ; but in the living animal they are elongated 

 into a cylindrical proboscis, composed of many 

 thousand small muscles, variously interlaced toge- 

 ther, moveable in every direction, and endowed 

 with exquisite sensibility, and terminated with an 

 appendix formed like a finger. This proboscis gives 

 the Elephant nearly as much address as the per- 

 fection of its hand can give to the Monkey. The 

 Elephant employs it to seize every thing he wishes 

 to carry to the mouth, and also to suck up his 

 water, which, by bending the trunk round, he then 

 conveys into the mouth ; it supplies the place also 

 of a long neck, which could not have carried his 

 thick head and weighty tusks. Within the head are 



* The proboscidiana have many analogies with the Rodentia; 

 first, their large incisors ; second, their cheek-teeth, often formed 

 of parallel laminae:; third, the form of many of their bones, Sfc. 



