264 



EXISTING INDIAN ELEPHANT. 



only eighteen.' l Extending the comparison to the Masto- 

 dons, and finding that M. Ohioticus has only twenty dorsal 

 vertebrae and an eqnal number of ribs, while its crown-ridges 

 are reduced to three or four, he concludes that the Mastodons 

 form not a diverging, but a parallel series with the Elephants. 

 The case, therefore, concerns not merely the Continental 

 and Sumatran varieties of the Indian Elephant, but is a 

 vital question ' pro aris et focis,' affecting the whole of the 

 Elephantidce, fossil and recent. For this reason I must be 

 permitted to examine it in some detail. 



And first as regards the asserted number in the African 

 Elephant. Professor Schlegel twits Cuvier with having 

 neglected to compare skeletons of the different species of 

 Elephant, and having thus deprived himself of the merit of 

 the discovery of the third living species. Is the reproach 

 well founded ? The only skeleton of the African form which 

 existed in the Parisian collections when Cuvier died, and 

 even when De Blainville wrote upon the family in 1844, 2 was 

 that of an adolescent female which lived for some time in 

 the menagerie of Louis the Fourteenth at Versailles. 3 It 

 was imported from Congo ; and we have the expressed or 

 implied authority of four most eminent and experienced 

 French comparative anatomists, namely, Daubenton, Cuvier, 

 Laurillard, and De Blainville, that it had only 20 dorsal 

 vertebrae and 20 pairs of ribs. Perrault, who dissected the 

 animal, assigns the same numbers ; and the accurate Dau- 

 benton, who enumerates the dimensions of all the bones in 

 such minute detail, says — ' II y a vingt vertebres dorsales, et 

 vingt cotes de chaque cote.' 4 He assigns the following num- 

 bers to the different divisions of the column : — 7 cervical, 20 

 dorsal, 3 lumbar, 3 sacral, 31 caudal vertebrae, and 20 pairs of 

 libs, of which 7 are true and 13 false. Laurillard, as is well 

 known, stood to Cuvier in the same relation of aid as 

 Daubenton did to Buffon, although he never was formally 

 recognized as his collaborateur. When Perrault's skeleton 

 passed into their charge, Cuvier could only state the number 

 which they saw, and finding the dorsal vertebrae to be the 

 same as in the Indian skeletons which he had dissected, 

 namely 20, he naturally assumed that to be the normal 

 number in both the living species, as Peter Camper did on 

 the same grounds. 



Skeletons of the African Elephant are very scarce in Eng- 



1 Bijdrage, &c. Elepk. Sumatranus ; 

 vide Translation by Dr. Sclater, ' Na- 

 tural Hist. Eeview,' vol. ii. p. 78. 



2 ' Osteographie : ' Elephants, p. 5. 



3 Perrault, Memoire pour eerv. a 



l'Hist. des Animaux, 1734, Part iii., 

 PI. xxiii. 



4 Buffon's ' Hist. Natur.' 4to torn. xi. 

 p. 113. 



