UNITY OK PLURALITY OF SPECIES. 267 



examined it, in company with Professor Brandt, and states 

 that the ribs and other parts are restorations made of deal. 

 He sums up his account thus : ' The head, with much of the 

 skin hanging upon it, some cervical vertebrse, a whole fore 

 leg, and more than one foot are, we believe, the genuine 

 Adams-Mammoth.' ' There is therefore, as yet, no trust- 

 worthy evidence to show that the Mammoth had only 

 eighteen dorsal vertebrse and ribs ; every presumption is in 

 favour of its having had at least nineteen. 



Next, as to the number of dorsal vertebrse in the Indian 

 Elephant. — Skeletons, reputed to be Indian, abound every- 

 where, but strange to say, authentic materials for settling 

 this part of the question are rare, in consequence of the 

 particulars respecting their origin not having been carefully 

 recorded. Until lately, no one doubted that they all belonged 

 to the same species, and the precise locality from which they 

 came was considered to be unimportant. 



Prof. Schlegel states that the Sumatran Elephant has 

 constantly 20 dorsal vertebrse and 20 pairs of ribs. That 

 this number does occur in the Ceylon animal also is placed 

 beyond question by the careful dissection of a great ana- 

 tomist, Peter Camper, 2 and by the observations of Cuvier 

 and De Blainville upon the skeletons of two known Ceylon 

 Elephants brought from Holland to Paris in 1795. The 

 distinguished Dutch zoologist further states, that all the 

 Indian Elephants which he had examined had, without ex- 

 ception, only 19 dorsal vertebrse and 19 pairs of ribs. That 

 this is occasionally or even frequently the case is beyond doubt, 

 from the corroborative evidence of Patrick Blair, Meckel, 

 Warren, and others. For, as remarked by Camper, it is highly 

 improbable that a dorsal vertebra should have disappeared 

 in macerating the bones, preparatory to setting them up. 

 But it is by no means equally certain that the number is 

 constantly limited, in the Indian form, to nineteen. Prof. 

 Schlegel cites the case of the Duvaucel skeleton, forwarded 

 from Bengal to Paris, in which there are twenty dorsal 

 vertebrse. 3 But he tries to get over the difficulty of this 

 exceptional case by the hypothesis that the live animal may 



1 ' Three Cities of Russia,' vol. ii. p. 

 222. I am indebted to Dr. J. E. Gray 

 for a knowledge of this passage; but 

 there are good grounds to believe that 

 the statement is unintentionally over- 

 charged by an astronomer, giving an 

 opinion on a question of comparative 

 anatomy. For Tilesius, whose account, 

 however defective, shows no signs of 

 partiality to Adams, but the reverse, 

 enumerates the parts that have been re- 



stored in wood and gypsum ; and, as re- 

 gards the vertebrse, he writes : ' Verte- 

 brse omnes genuinse ossese, ideoque car- 

 tilagine oxsiccato inter omnemvertebram 

 instruct*, robustiores Elephantinis.' 

 (O'p. citat. p. 504.) The vertebrse, ex- 

 cepting those of the tail, were less liable 

 to be separated than any other part of 

 the skeleton. 



2 ' Anat. d'un Elephant Male,' p. 63. 



3 Nat. Hist. Review, ii. p. 7i. 



