iViii 



we have just noticed. Without his huge weight, his upright limbs, 

 short strong neck, and large weighty skull, hollowed out by 

 sinuses, ho could not have rambled through the dense jungle 

 which protects him ; without his huge plantigrade feet, his tusks, 

 and the irregular facial sinuses by which the brain is concealed, he 

 would long ago have succumbed to carnivorous foes and to man. 

 His beautiful organ of touch and prehension has atoned for the 

 shortness of his neck, and obtains for him grass, or branches 

 from trees to a level with which his stature brings him above 

 most other mammalian denizens of the jungle. The natnre of 

 his food accounts for the similarities between his alimentary 

 canal and that of the horse and some other burbivora, and that 

 of the rat. Even branches of considerable size crushed be- 

 tween his enormous grinders assist to feed him, for, like rodents, 

 he can obtain nourishment from wood, which, however, generally 

 conduces simply to due repletion of his digestive organs. But 

 why the cetacean characters of the skull? They result from 

 atrophy of the nasal chambers, and can hardly be thought true 

 affinitive indications. This imperfect development of nasal pas- 

 sages accords well with the absence of pleural sac, and the ex- 

 treme smallness of the nostrils and the length of the nasal pas- 

 sages. Doubtless throughout these passages the odoriferous 

 particles make due impression on the mucous membrane, as the 

 air is slowly drawn in by expansion of the long generalised 

 pleuraless thorax, sufficiently to fulfil the respiratory needs of 

 the animal, which are not great, for the circulatory apparatus is 

 small and infantile, the pulse slow, and the red corpuscles below 

 the mammalian average size. The life changes of the animal, 

 also, are not rapid ; excretion is slowly performed by his poorly 

 developed respiratory and renal organs and not excessively large 

 liver nor very active skin, and so we can well understand why, in 

 nature, the elephant, like other slow living animals, attains a 

 great age. Anatomy often leads us to surmise what is confirmed 

 by other lines of observation ! Finally, the thickness of the skin 

 protects the other organs from sharp stakes and other bodies 

 likely to injure during passage through the jungle, the attacks 

 of leeches and other external parasites, such as might readily 

 be obtained in marshy parts of the jungle, and in the ponds and 

 nullahs in which the elephant delighteth to gambol. Also, witli 



